Best Known As: Film Actor

Gist:  Richard E. Grant (born Richard Grant Esterhuysen, 5 May 1957) is a Swazi born English actor, screenwriter and director.

Life Facts:  Grant was born in Mbabane, Swaziland. He adopted the surname Grant when he moved to the UK as an adult and registered with the British Actors' Equity Association. His father was Henrik Esterhuysen, a man of Afrikaner extraction, who was head of education for the British government administration in the British Protectorate of Swaziland. His mother was a local ballet teacher of South African and German extraction.

As a young child Richard went to primary school at St Marks, a local government school in Mbabane that had only recently become racially integrated. At the age of nine, he witnessed an adulterous relationship between his mother and another man that subsequently led to the break-up of his parents' marriage.

He attended secondary school at Waterford Kamhlaba, just outside Mbabane, where he was a day scholar. He studied English and Drama at the University of Cape Town. He was a member of the Space theatre company in Cape Town before moving to London in 1982.

"I grew up in Swaziland when it was mired in a 1960s sensibility", he later said. "The kind of English spoken where I grew up was a period English sound and when I came to England people said 'how strange'. Charles Sturridge, who directed Brideshead Revisited for TV, said 'you speak English like someone from the 1950s.'"

He married voice coach Joan Washington in 1986 and has one daughter with her (Olivia) and a stepson (Tom). Grant is a teetotaler. After casting him as the alcoholic Withnail, director Bruce Robinson made Grant drink a bottle of vodka in one sitting so that he had experience of the sensation. He is an avid follower of West Ham United, and appeared on Sky Sports' Soccer AM to show his support for the team on the morning of the 2006 FA Cup Final.

He also appeared on BBC1's show Saturday Kitchen on 14 July 2007, where he confessed to detesting dairy products, while his favourite food is giant prawns on a bed of rice.

In October 2008, he told The Times that he is an atheist.

*Codename Kyril (1988) as Sculby

*Absolutely Fabulous (1995) as Edina's dream Justin

*Captain Star (1997) as Captain Jim Star

*A Royal Scandal (1996) as King George IV

*The Scarlet Pimpernel (1998) as Sir Percy Blakeney

*Let Them Eat Cake in episode The Portrait (1999) as Monsieur Vigée-Lebrun

*Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death (1999) as The Conceited Doctor

*A Christmas Carol (1999) as Bob Crachit

*The Hound of the Baskervilles (2002) as Jack Stapleton

*Posh Nosh (2004) as Simon Marchmont

*Frasier in episode Goodnight, Seattle (2004) as Stephen Moon

*90 Days in Hollywood (2004) as the narrator

*The story of Bohemian Rhapsody (2004) as the narrator

*Home Farm Twins (2005) as Paul Baker

*Above and Beyond (2006) as Don Bennett

*Dalziel and Pascoe (2007) as Lee Knight

*Mumbai Calling (2007) as Benedict T. Harlow

Career Facts:  Grant's first film role was the perpetually inebriated title character in Withnail and I, which has established a large cult following. During the story his character drinks a bottle of lighter fluid, which the set crew had intentionally filled with vinegar prior to filming. His reaction in the film was genuine.

Following Withnail and I, Grant began appearing in Hollywood films, and quickly established himself as a powerful character actor in a wide array of films, from blockbuster studio movies to small independent projects. Over the past twenty years, Grant has had strong supporting roles in the films Henry & June, L.A. Story, The Player, The Age of Innocence, The Portrait of a Lady, Spice World, Gosford Park, Bright Young Things, and Penelope. Unlike other prominent British actors working in Hollywood, Grant has performed in movies well beyond period historical films.

Grant has twice portrayed the Doctor from Doctor Who, unofficially on both occasions. In the comedy sketch Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death, he portrayed a version of the Tenth Doctor, referred to as the Quite Handsome Doctor. He also voiced a now non-canonical Ninth Doctor for the BBC original animated webcast Scream of the Shalka.

On 1 December 2006, Grant turned real life investigator when, with the help of BBC Newsnight he exposed a $98 million scam to sell a bogus AIDS cure.

Grant appeared as "The Voice" in 2+2+2 at American Nights at The King's Head Theatre, from 3 July to 29 July 2007, and also recently co-starred in the London-based comedy Filth and Wisdom, a film which marks the directorial debut of pop singer Madonna.

On 22 November 2007, he gave a keynote speech at North London Collegiate School in North London as part of their Performing Arts Centre Opening Festival, and presented the 2008 Laurence Olivier Awards.

In 2008, he will star in the movie adaptation of Irvine Welsh's best-selling novel Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance, and he will also make his musical theatre debut with Opera Australia, playing the role of Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady, at the Theatre Royal, Sydney.

Grant is a successful author, with works such as By Design calling on his Hollywood experience.