The amount of people that have said to me, where do you keep your skill?
Because they were convinced that or wanted to be convinced that I had wanted.
Yeah, I've never had that. But people think I went to Harvard because Skyler, the character I played in Goodle he went to Harvard. Most people they're like, what was Harvard by? It was amazing? Hello, I'm mini driver. I've always loved Proust's questionnaire. It was originally in nineteenth century parlor game where players would ask each other thirty five questions aimed at revealing the other player's true nature. In asking different people the same set of questions, you can
make observations about which truths appear to be universal. And it made me wonder, what if these questions were just a jumping off point, what greater depths would be revealed if I asked these questions as conversation starters. So I adapted Pru's questionnaire and I wrote my own seven questions that I personally think are pertinent to a person's story. They are when and where were you happiest? What is the quality you like least about yourself? What relationship, real
or fictionalized, defines love? For you, What question would you most like answered, What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most? What would be your last meal? And can you tell me something in your life that's grown out of a personal disaster? And I've gathered a group of really remarkable people, ones that I am honored and humbled to have had the chance to engage with. You may not hear their answers to all seven of these questions.
We've whittled it down to which questions felt closest to their experience, or the most surprising, or created the most fertile ground to connect. My guest today is the comparable actor and author Richard E. Grant. I say incomparable because I have genuinely never met anyone in my life who is as curious, interested, fun, clever, positive and wise as Richard. He's the person you're most pleased to see when you walk into a room full of strangers or of friends.
And it's quite confronting interviewing him because he follows up every question with one for you, and he won't stop until you've answered it. And it's not as a deflection, but it's because he's interested. I have three favorite movies, and Richard's first movie with them, and I is one
of them. It is a film that is so perfectly and eccentricly British, and the wayward, giant, roaring character of with Noel, who Richard plays, is lodged forever and ever in my heart, like the Queen and the Clash and cucumber sandwiches. It's quite rare for actors to begin with a moment of pure incandescence and to then consistently expand beyond that in a unique and engaging way. I mean, I think, but to me, Richard has done that throughout his entire career. We talk about London and our loves,
about Oscars and competitive creativity and about loss. As ever, it was a riveting and wonderful conversation. And if you haven't already read his book A Pocket Full of Happiness, I urge you to do so, because it is a truly beautifully written book. And you can watch him later this year in the movie's Death of a Unicorn and urrembug. Do you know this was the first year in twenty five years that I haven't gone to the Oscars or any of the Oscar parties and just stayed at home.
I mean, it was very difficult to get from Malibu. Everything shot, the roads were all still shut. There was no possible way of doing it anyway, But it was It was so interesting to just observe and to see the pageant from a distance, because it really is a pageant.
It's funny, so observing big thing from not being there.
Yeah, how did that make you feel about it?
To actually realize that. I have always struggled with the idea of competitive creativity, the idea that you would be put into a position where you are are judging who is best Jeremy Strong or Kieran Culkin or Edward Norton. It's absurd when you break it down. And yet there's this delight and wonder and the speech of the person that does win, and the excitement, and there's there's something It felt like it felt sort of Roman, That's what it felt like. It felt like it was the Colosseum.
It just it felt like it was proper entertainment, that you shouldn't really take any of it to heart at all and just have a big fun party, win lou Straw, whatever. And I think it was sort of seeing that and the celebration more than the competition.
You know it's all competitions.
Yeah, when they focused on each person's face awful momer making.
But they you know before people are going to Louis. It's we watched because you don't.
Get it livening My George and I watched the pil activity and she could not dare to look at any more.
It was horrific. It's horrific.
Well she was then, because any time I don't have been there six years ago was I can remember I was in the third row.
Glen Clace was in the stunt blow in the middle of the stunt bowen in a bold dress.
I remember an awfully pound train behind them, so she looked like human Oscar and Olivia Oemen was eighteen brows back in boone box and had done no publicity shooting Brown and every single plandis and you know, all the Vaga Solts everything.
Were the Glen close for a sixth nomination.
Gene on the Golden Globe, and I think the exact same thing happened to Ignore as well, saying it's it's absolutely brutal to anybody outside of Sherby's.
It's like with people worrying about that, and they love it.
They love seeing the faces of the gutted people, it's like it's like, that's right, you didn't win.
I tell you what was so we are suing is that I knew in Cavali that I was six years ago that the other PHO nominee is because we all got to know each other, as you know that I got to know all the other guys almost.
Of five months political campaign, and we all.
Knew that Mahashel Ali was going to win because it was it was a given at that point. And like like qan Falcon this year, there's always one award where it's absolutely ye, you're not able to prepare the speech because you know, unless you dropped there and said, oh, you know, as a results of this pressing, I've been here.
That's why I'm here. And as soon as.
The nominees came up and any Pillar and the other two comedy partners in crime is sitting directly behind me chapping off the shoulder and loser welcome to the Losers Club, and they said ninety nine percent of the people that they go back.
To, we're the majority. I said, there must have been some percentage of your brain which I thought, no, there's a chance on the worst. They said, you're lying, You're lying. I said, believe me. I knew, we knew it was a bottle, no chance. But you're talking about the Colosseum.
Thing is that it is not always about as we know, it's not about the best. It's about they say deserves the most or who is the most popular at this point in time. And it's like the economy wanted to give it to Charon Copkin.
Yes, yes, and they wanted to give it to Mikey Madison. It's true. It's a funny sort of tidal thing. Like it was really interesting just watching it, not being there and not kind of getting ready to go out to the parties and being in a state of sort of you know, fizz and excitement. It was just to genially watch it and to enjoy it and to listen. I remember when I was nominated when they called it because it was always the first category back in the day
best Supporting Actress. And my dad just like he was holding my hand and he just leant over as they were reading out the nominies and he was like, you do know you're not going to win ant you I was like, hold off, what I mean? Yes, But also maybe, and he was like, I'm not this. I mean, it was so funny and great to have him there, and I was chuckling at him doing that in that moment.
It was like having someone pinching your finger when you're getting an injection that you're busy looking at that thing and thinking that's funny. Well, the hard thing's happenings.
When she came with me, Joan couldn't face good the last minute. My daughter said, whatever happens. Do you know that you're one of five actors on the planet this moment because see dissmination. They can never take that away from me for evermore until you're boxed up and blount. It shall be am.
It's true.
And I know that you had this experience.
But the amount of people that have said to me, where do you keep your skill?
Because they were convinced that or wanted to be convinced that I had want Yeah, you know, after a while, I just you know, civilians would say, you know, where do you keep it? I'd say, I'll tell you what.
No, I've never had that. But people think I went to Harvard because Skuyler, the character I played in Pople he went to Harvard. Most people They're like they were like, what was Horvord?
Like, well, that was great, you know, I'm in mensa.
It was amazing, it was lovely. I got my honorary doctorate after playing a Actually who went there?
When? When?
When Wind not going to the oscars this year? Did you suffer from fomo?
Actually? Actually no, it's funny I thought that I would. I did. I did wake up in the middle of the night at like two thirteen, and I was like, and I knew all of my friends who would just be.
Rage for the granity Fair party.
Where and when were you happiest?
Well, it's like telepathic because it's just because we would just have the oscars. I was sitting with our daughter in an Italian restaurant at one thirty in the afternoon in English time. We both had iPhones on the table, leaning against the salt sellers. The names of the nominees came up, and when Timothy's name didn't come up, need always being pulled the boss the five. When Key didn't come up, I thought, oh, that's it, and I, you know, spit.
Second I looked at our daughter and thought, I'm not I'm not getting a nomination and dang. Next second, name came up, So I think that's as you will know more than anybody. That's it is that moment that you feel the approbation or the sort of stample of approval of your peers that they have you feel seen.
You know, you're think all away as an actor, and you do the stuff. And I never won any award or denominated for stuff ever was all so when this happened, it was such an aut of body experience that that moment I thought, I will never ever have this feeling again in quite the same way.
And it's not like falling in larval, you know, when you get married or the birth of your child. It is something that is I don't know outside of that, and you I take for an actor just that basic equation, but a formula that I find most actors of big ego low self esteem, which is always contradictive for people to understand because they think, you know, you seem so confident, you know what you have low self esteem? You go, yeah, most actors I know do, but have a big enough eager to go.
Give me the path over many drive. I can put on a right.
And I can have Charlie hair, and I can puante more teeth, dumb ike and stuff. And I think that goes right back to being a kid, when it's like watch me, Dad, watch me map, and when your whole profession or it feels like your whole profession is kind of going.
We see you.
That was absolutely Zilo working and as good as anything every experience.
It's so good to hear you say that, because it is an extraordinaryly rarefied experience and it is like a bolt of pure lightning. And you're right, it's about being I used to. I mean, I still think that ninety percent of parenting is witnessing the whole look at me, look at me on the swings man, we look at me, look at me do this thing, And that taken to the nth degree in kids who want to act and who love acting and are that way incline, it is
about being witnessed. It's about being seen for this extraordinarily ephemeral and creative and strange magic that lives inside an actor. I know that sounds wildly poncy, but you know what I mean.
On the world and only let me just stop you there, madam, because I thought that it was a victim specifically to actors, and yet if somebody has delivered something, or has done some carpentry or fixed something or done with gardner whatever.
Somebody's come to do something. You know they're being paid as we are paid.
They want to be acknowledged and praised for it, just like the mediatest actor that I've ever timoplast.
Sometimes more so it's the acknowledgment of your work.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The exo because I think, like you've just said, whether you're a carpenter or a plumber, or an electrician or a teacher, the thing that you have inside I do for it to become exo, to not be that internal experience of this thing, is this thing that I love, but rather to put it on the outside and then to have people go, yes, indeed, I acknowledge that magic is magic. It's fleeting, but it is so wonderful.
You know, it's all the climate I've been all the time when people say they give somebody a gift, and I hear the master.
Person, But did you like it? Did you really like it? And think this is as needing as the only actor kind of going. Have you seen my show? Did you like that performance? For the basic rid.
One hundred percent is to feel useful, needed and acknowledged. We just do it in like you know, clothes that get judged and people who are annoyed by what they can perceived to be an extraordinarily glamorous life. I would like to tell you, honestly, Manchester is a great, worthy, amazing northern city, but it is so dark and cold
and rainy and pretty doer. I was shooting in a basement on a night shoot the other night, in the freezing cold rain, thinking there is nothing less glamorous in the whole world than pretending in a basement in the middle of the night for money.
But it's still better than joming down a coal mine every day.
In fact, that's exactly what jimmy Nesbit said. He literally said that he went it beats going down a coal mine, and I was like, correct, So what is the quality you like least about yourself?
That doubt?
And I have that every day, even at sixty seven three quarters. I try and that's why I yeah, Clampton shots, but at the beginning of every job, in particular, that that just comes in, like the ob truss lands on each shoulder goes you can't do this.
Everybody the weed through is doing it. Williantly, and every word that comes out of your mouth is like dropping like a shrinking anvil, and people are going, oh my god, we should have thought, you know, and I could just see the name of the people, but would be my contemporan.
So that is the thing that I've come to accept, that it's something that you have to just tell the thing to shut up. But sometimes it does overwhelm you. And right top after the first read through of something, and after the first day of shooting, I anticipate that I'm going to be fired the next day. And if
i haven't been, I think win win. And this is not disingenious because I did a TV series that came up earlier this year and after the weed through the media actor, we did the weed through a chalklop in the afternoon, and at four thirty in the afternoon, my Asian coudinates said, little going back intomorrow because they've a placed.
The lead act.
Oh my god, fine, so you can be replaced like that is very real. I mean, that's only happened twice of my body is doing this, but the fact that it has happened and it does happen, I find feeds all that Parania, what's yours?
Oh God? I mean, there's a mercurialness that I find terrifying in myself that I know I am a fundamentally good person. I've observed myself for fifty five years. I'm a good mother, and I know the nice things. But there is just this kraken in me that comes out sometimes of intolerance and impatience and not being aware of how powerful I think I am in my reactions and how that can affect other people. Made amends, truly, and if that's the only thing that comes with age, is
an immediate and acute awareness. But in terms of like the quality that I like least about myself, it's the one that I need to shine the light on the most is impatience and not realizing that that might hurt somebody because of the way that I might react quickly to something.
What this situation? Why you did lose it?
I was doing something that required complete attention and someone kept asking me to focus on what they were doing, and I said, I just need five minutes. I just have to I'm really sorry, and I'd started there, and then they kept asking me, and eventually I was like, could you please just give me five minutes and it upset the person, It really upset them. But what can you do as like a fractured fragile human except to go this is my shittiest bit and this is the
place that requires work. I am not perfect.
Now you see yourself as a fractured fragile people, I think.
We all are. And that's only looking at the fractured fragile. But it's then there are the great, wonderful, generous, kind, loving open parts of everybody that are comforting to others, and that all the good things. But I do think that we've sort of been told that we're meant to
be perfect all the time, and it's impossible. So all you can do is when you see your imperfection happening, I think, is to acknowledge it, to have an awareness about it, to apologize if you need to apologize, To sit down and have a proper talk with yourself about this thing that you would continue you need and want to change, and file it under in the serenity prayer, God garant me the serenity to accept the things I
cannot change and change the things that I can. Did you do what did you need to absolutely to absolutely apologized? Explain what was going on. I'm really sorry that was on me, that was my bad says what else can you do? Accept a knowledge in the moment that you're not at your best and say I'm really really sorry.
I think about when people have done that with me, and if someone's looked me in the eye and apologized for an unkindness or anger, it's very hard for me not to forgive them because I think I feel like it's the acknowledgment of that behavior that is the most important thing.
Have you worked with an actor or producer who is tefron coaching They don't care if they're runed all?
Yeah, I have. And also there seems to be absolutely no consequence at all. But my mother used to say to me, she was like the fact that there is always consequence for you. Mini if you have a harsh word, or you're sharp or something and someone tells you that they feel bad, is that you have the opportunity and the inclination to fix it and to work on it, and that that's a gift rather than get constantly getting away with it and having people speak badly about you.
But you carry on working, and you you know, do you know what I mean when you said about doubt. It reminded me of that Peter Strawn piece of writing in Conclave that Ray Lyin says when he says, I'm paraphrating if everything was certain, there would be no mystery, and without mystery there would be no faith. So I'm supplanting mystery for doubt and the opposite of certainty, and that it does require a sort of a faith in the innate unics of you and that.
People love you, or do you find that face?
I honestly think you have to set your coordinance for everything, for everything that you want in yourself, that is difficult. You have to set your coordinance towards that, and your faith is that you hope that your ship will sail there.
If it doesn't, then what do you do.
You take a dead reckoning that is a sailing town, Richard. You take a dead reckoning from where you are when you don't know where you are and you don't know what. You take a dead reckoning, which is from the last known position. You take a reading of where you think you might be going. But I think it's about intention, not in so much in sailing. In sailing, you don't want to just intend to get to where.
You're going, should there be an analysis of your lid you put your boat in at ports and something like, right, I'm intending to get to the Caribbean.
I'm intending Barbados by lunchtime.
I think that's a great course of action. Don't think it along, just go for it.
What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you?
I've thought, because of my parents for Aircomony's divorce, that love didn't really exist in the way that the movies and the books said that they did. And I thought, well, if I never get mad and never have a child, I'll somehow be im mute to all that stuff. And then, of course, when I was twenty six, I met somebody who you knew, called Joan Washington and fell in love.
That's the bit where you have no control over it, And then you know, I think that's more than anything about being love with somebody, is that you feel and are truly seen like no other human being sees or knows you in that way. That to me is the greatest giftable and worth more than any money that I might own.
How would you describe what it is for you?
It is the tolerance of that love is the love that I experience with my son Henry and with my boyfriend Addison. It encompasses all of the things that are beautiful and difficult, so to be seen as a whole human whats and all for better or worse, forever and ever are men unconditionally.
And this is the first time you've been in love like this.
I've been in love before, but there was all an imbalance. There was never it was either never reciprocated in the way I loved more or they loved more. This is the love that I realized I dreamed about, of the symbiosis, the roaring with laughter at the things that other people found difficult. He minds the very the very best in me and Henry, and the creation of our little family is the light of my life. Truly, It's really simple.
It's so interesting when you say, at twenty six, you know you met Joan, who was and is a spectacular spirit. You knew when Joan had walked into the room. So the idea that you that you met and that you fell in love like I feel that incandescence and also that that lasted and that lasts today. I think your definition of love is I mean everybody's is different, right, but it's a really beautiful one.
Have you ever had fan love for somebody that is lasted beyond being a teenager?
Yes, I've loved Daniel day Lewis since I was twelve years old and he went to my school. And I've said this before on the show, and we were like vaguely were not related by blood, but he is the cousin of a man my aunt married, so there was this tenuous connection. And he was incredibly kind to me.
And when I would stand in a driving rain watching him play football and old boys matches, and I'd wait and I'd walk back to the changing rooms with him, and he'd give me advice on the National Youth Theater and acting and just to keep reading and to keep reading plays and to keep being in as many plays as possible. And I love him with a complete devotion that was forged when I was twelve.
And have you seen him as an adult?
I have, not frequently at all, just a couple of times. We had a very long plane ride together, once which was honestly epic because I kept falling asleep and then waking up and I was still next to doubt, and then I think at the Oscars or the Golden Globes or something, and I went over that was the first time I've seen him since I was a kid, and said to him and his lovely wife, I said, you
you made such a difference. You made it okay that I didn't get into the National Youth Theater, and that you made it okay to sort of keep figuring it out and you didn't have to follow anyone else's path. But I mean, it is a particular definition of love.
It's a one side lot.
I have that with somebody brought Barbara streisand I've got a two foot statue of her head sculpt But that is a completely one way.
It's a one side, one side. It means it's perfect.
It is perfect and when you meet and it's not a disappointment, you know the old never meet your heroes. You've met yours multiple times. I've met mine multiple times, and it is only an endorsement of that rather than it being.
Disappointing.
Exactly exactly.
That is another amazing which you're supposed to path through by the time adolescence has stopped and real well.
It is funny that I love that there are some things that they're held in amber. They're held in some sort of energetic amber inside you, and they're just not subject to time. They just stay the way that they are. Like I know that I will love Daniel Da Lewis until the day that I die in a very particular, devoted, appreciative way, just as you will love Barbara Streisand what question would you most like answered?
I want to know what has happened to my vast collection of Dinky toys that I had when I will the ply, and to know where they are, That's what I want to know.
Where were they last?
Well, they were all in Swazilang, which is now called Esporteini in some hemisphere in Southeast Africa. And I think that if I could have all my Dinky toys back then, the meaning of life would be complete for me.
I would have no expectation. And beyond that, So, whether they've been destroyed in playing war, or whether they are buried.
In the mud pies that I made when I was a kid, whether they're buried in the garden of the different houses that I grew up in, I don't know. But that is the question I would like answered much more than what I imagine most people ask is is their life after death?
Yeah, that's the number one or isn't because dopes come back. Well, there's not life like this. It's not the same.
This is it, This is it, this is it. I agree with you, and I'm very I'm reassured by that. I love No, this is it.
MM.
Will you live very presently? From the outside looking in or just from the time that I've spent with you, you live incredibly presently?
That you have to you know, all the philosopher I've read, the analysis I've had, or the people that I've met, or the people that I've admired, I think that to live in a state of could have, would have, should have is torture. That if only part of life is you know, it's like remorse and regret. It doesn't fulfill anything.
It's a dead end. It's an absolute dead end. Regret. There's only moving forward.
I've stop this going border by the minute, and I can't stop this lava flowing. No, but I would like my dinky toy collection.
On your dinky toys, you want to know where your dinky toys are? Have anyone out there? I mean, are there any identifying features that they have your name on them.
No, because dinky toys are these dinky they're tiny matchbox cars and they are so cute, you know. So this is completely pristian of thinking you're the Madeline. If I found this match box dinky toy car or my childhood would be returned to me.
Do you remember when the last time you saw them? When? That was?
Well, when up until I was ten years old, up until nineteen sixty seven, because I was born in black and white, you see, because all my baby pictures on black and white. God chrome hadn't quite come in there. So yeah, that's that's well, all of them back.
Yours is now my number two favorite answer to that question. My number one will forever be Jamina Jamil. When I said what question would you? Mostly answered and like quick as a snap, she was like, yeah, I really want to know if any women really enjoy reverse cowboy.
The fuck? It's reverse cowboy.
It's a sexual position, Richard, and I did that cowboy?
Yeah you do with your hands? How how did that work?
If you're sitting on a man but you're facing backwards, he's essentially waiting reverse cowgirl shit, reverse cowboy? Fuckar. I love it when your producer has to put in the chat it's reverse cowgirls.
The man is sitting on the chair or sitting Oh my god, this is okay, and leadership it's the other way.
No, he's eyeing on the bed as far as I know, and she is facing away from him, so he's looking at her back. That's reverse cowgirl as far as I know. Maybe I've been doing it wrong all these is well, I've certainly been giving it the wrong name. I've been calling it reverse cowboy.
I've had a very sheltered life that I had no idea what you were talking about.
Well, now you do.
I do.
But as you can see, I'm a terrible teacher because I don't know what it's called.
I'm not entirely Shane going to extract this particular moment and say they were discussing.
We don't worry. It's me who looks bad, not you. As per usual, what person place for experience most altered your life?
London? London.
Everything that's has been life enhancing, life changing, life charging, reverberating. Everything that has happened to me has happened in the city in which I live and which.
I've speaking to you from.
Now I genuinely felt like when I emigrated here when I was twenty five that I felt like Dick Whittington and the Panther arriving with a rocksack of stuff. I think I've come here to find my fortune, and everything that has.
Happened workwise, love wise, family wise is so beyond anything that I could have dared anticipate that I feel like I've won the pot of gold.
And you attribute that to London.
Yeah, because the people are here, the spirit of the place and the sense of you are, and the culture and the history and just all of it, and the weather.
All of it contributed in a profound and even arbitrary, chaotic way and has completely shaped my legs. And I've now been here for forty three years and counting, so I've lived here much longer than I lived in Swaza, where I grew up. What's yours?
Oh my goodness, I think having Henry changed my life so extraordinarily in a way I could never have imagined. But before that, this one weekend where my lovely then agent gave me the money to go to New York. My first film hadn't come out yet, and she said, I think you should go and meet some casting directors in New York and I was like, I don't have any money to get there, and she said, oh no, I'm going to pay for your ticket and I'll pay
for a hotel just for a couple of nights. And she sent me off, and in that time I met a casting director who gave me a job. In the room, there were two directors next door an actress had fallen out.
It was extraordinary coincidence. And I didn't go home. I had a little tiny overnight, you know, two day case with me and I didn't go home for two So that experience going to New York on what was meant to be for a weekend and my mother rather sniffy looking over what I was packing, and when she saw I wasn't packing any bras, she was like, oh, You're never coming back. I wrote about it in my book because it was so funny. It was such an amazing moment. I was like, how the fuck? What does she know?
Of course I'm coming back and coming back on Monday.
Oh, how old I was?
Twenty three? Wow, I was a baby. Yeah, I was a young twenty three as well. Yeah, So that was so you've never looked, never looked back on an adventure really like riding a wave like it has been, like riding away.
You feel in America you are on a much better surf wave and tide than you ever were in England.
Well, for a woman in England in the late eighties early nineties to want to be as free and as wild as I wanted to be, and as give me life or give me nothing, it was incredibly unseen in London. And there was something in America that embraced my feeling of how far could I ride this wave? Like how big could this wave be? How far could I go? Oh my goodness? And I didn't feel like I could do that in London. I didn't feel like that was supported.
If I were a man, I think it would have been different.
Do you feel that London by comparison is provincial?
No, not provincial. But there was definitely a sneariness and a sniffiness to the ambition that I had of the limitlessness. It was like it wanted to put a cap on it, and how dare you want more than what you have? Which you know it's a conservative way of looking at things.
That is absolutely you've just nailed what I kind of Quintessentially, British attitude is to ambition and success. If you're a British actor and only said what are you doing next?
And you said, oh, I'm during Student Spielberg and then I'm doing one of the curtain Tarantina. Having sort of like played down where's in La or New York, somebody says what are you doing next? I'm doing See, there's a license to be as celebratory as you did without it being sort poppy syndrome where there's a sort of mate instinct or desire to catch you down to size.
And go who the hell did think you are?
And I don't I don't disbelieve that that humility is important and that staying grounded and true. And I definitely went out to the furthest reaches of the stars with celebrity and fame and then came crashing back to earth
and that that was a good thing. But I wanted that experience of absolute It's the same feeling of taking off on a wave that you know is far too fucking big for you and it's going to smash you, but in that moment and if you make the drop and you ride it, even for a few seconds, the feeling is it is so extraordinary, You're in concert with something that is so powerful and amazing and unfettered. I think it was that feeling of that freedom that was absolutely it was just divine and I made too.
You are fearless, you.
Know what, there's a fearless quality that might also be WA's the word when it's a bit dangerous, folly, But in the moment, there is a fearlessness that I embrace that I love and I know I'm very good at being able to support people who are not feeling fearless and to really help them find that courage to find I'm good at helping people find courage. I know that that's a good thing about me.
Like you to funnel some down in my brain on a daily basis, please feed me that fearlessness.
I'm very grateful for that.
Love. Well, it gets you into all sorts of it's misinterpreted and its People don't like it. They don't like seeing people feel is. They're like, why should you be able to go and do that? How dare you h like? That was always the feeling, certainly like in England, that you had to be an awful, ambitious, terrible person in
order to want to go and embrace something unknown. Fully, there was always that payment, and I think particularly for women, like it was really unseemly for women to be ambitious and wanting. Men are always allowed to be ambitious.
And do you think that's it?
Yeah? I think it's changing. I do, I really do. Yeah. And I think as you get older, you're far more able to articulate calmly. And what on earth are you talking about?
That?
Having wonderful goals and dreams and ambitions and what you're setting your course for is big and unbridled and beautiful. Why on earth is that a bad thing?
How do you see world? Bait?
Gosh? I mean, I really strive for it to be physically abundant. I really really hope. My neighbor she swam every single day for the twenty years that we live next door to each other. So from seventy until ninety that's what I want. I want to be in a black bathing suit, walking down to the ocean, diving in at seventy eight, eighty eighty four, lying on my back the.
Next forty till you're ninety five, and then beyond that.
I'd really like to have a physical and mental acuity, and I would really like to continue to sort of share stories in some fashion. That's my dream. And for my son and my partner to be healthy and happy. That's it. Oh, that's my dream.
Simple. So you don't need to go to any therapy or analysis from nowmers, because it's clear maybe you don't do you.
You know, I have done god loads currently. I felt very clear about the shit that I've got to work on,
and I will sit down and work on it. I'll write about it, I will look at it, I will turn it over, I will meditate, like I feel like that's maybe what's glorious about being fifty five is that I've observed the observable stuff about myself and now you it's really just about working on it or enjoying, enjoying the fruits of your labor, being available to help others like I love I love working with younger actors and actresses and so gee them along and God, don't worry
about that. And this is so brilliant. And you know it wasn't like that when I was a kid.
Jenner Bob was really leveling. I've just been on holiday on Lamu Island off the Kenyan Coast, two teenage girls, one was eighteen, one was sixteen, and they said to me, which female actor do you know holding high esteem?
I said, well, this person has had most nominations, and I worried you that once on the iron lady paying it's more bold. But the person that I'd been most inspired by being around a Washington career all these decades is male Street. And they had no idea who she was christ or didn't know Male Street.
It all goes to dust, It all just goes to dust.
And they then said, well, what has she been in? And I started scrubbing my brain and well, what would they feasibly have seen? I said, have you seen Mama mir No? And I thought, well, yeah, that was It's sort of straight thing to hear. Yeah, sober and and you know the only thing, Well, that's just the it's.
Just the way it is. You just do the work, like you know how I feel about with no al and you know that that's it. That's it's in the same place that Daniel de lewis. It's in my heart. It sits unfettered perfection. So to have made and you've made many films that have that effect on people from the player to take your pick, but that particularly is it enough that you know what Meryl Street meant to you?
I know what you mean to me and what you mean to my son, By the way, in having watched with now, perhaps it's enough and that that's the evolution, is that we all arrive at a day where the teenagers go, I have no idea who you're talking about. That's completely meaningless to me, and it's awful, And it's also how it is. That is the.
Steve Martin said to me ten years ago.
We were talking about, you know, you're talking about that point of retiring and it was pre only murders in the building, sort of giving him a whole new career on television. He said, most people's careers are over five years before they realize.
That they are.
And he said, you have five YouTube clips of your career. That's probably as good as I thought.
Yeah. Again, it's sort of reassuring.
It's so ephemeral a short short amount of time, so enjoy it while it's around.
That's I suppose my philosophy. This stuff.
It sort of helps quell the doubt of you know, I think, well, these teenagers didn't know who Males Street Bars, I thought, Yeah.
Just all you can do is just keep is just like keep showing up, keep on trucking, keep on trucking, and keep hoping that there's a place for you in the workplace that you can still offer.
At my stage of the world, old fart parts still available.
But you are so in demand. Richard, like, that's list.
It sounds like I'm hard pooning for you to reassure me. I'm not. I'm just sending out the lines there of the reality of what I think it is.
Yeah, because there are so many actors, don't you find you look at online on Instagram all the people's dresses and the stuff for the people who went to the Oscars, and the people were with the Vanity Fair part. So many people and there are so many people names I've heard of.
But if I had to be in a lineup, would I be able to identify room? Do you know who everybody is?
No? I mean I know lots of them, but I don't know loads. I also put that into the kind of that there is so much content now, there are so many more platforms for content. It used to just be there are films and then there are you know, network television and now it's just endless feeding the beast of streaming. And I think that if you love it and you're lucky enough, as you know, my dad said, find what you love and get someone to pay you
to do it. So if someone is still paying you to do this thing that you love, were quits in.
Now you're up. I agree, and.
That there will always be a wave, just as we were the wave of young the new upcoming talent. There will always be this replenishing wave. People will always be moving into the next season of their life if they're lucky, And that it's an aberration to think that that flow should be anything other than that flow. That you know, you can't buck against the seasons. You've got to embrace them, right Indeed, indeed, I mean I'm saying this obviously, like
I don't do it every day. I'm trying to say the best version of it, like it's really it's gutting. Gravity is gutting gravity on one's face and bottom is just terrific. Like that I could do without that. No more reverse, no reverse Cowgirl for me because of gravity. What would be your last meal?
A dozen oysters and two dozen giant Indian ocean prawns that about ten inches long.
Ah, and that you shell yourself. This is that part of the whole.
Thing, yahnu oh yeah, darling butter on top, and then an entire Christmas pudding with light chi sorbe that only I would get to eat and most people don't like.
So I've got twenty Chris well, where of a dining breed?
You know?
I know we are with lightweight, with light che yum. That is very very delicious. I know that you would recently you were in the ocean, did you eat some.
Drank pron and I had some for lunch today? What was yours mine?
It's the roast chicken that my mother taught me to make with the most delicious gravy, roast potatoes, some giant pile of greens, roast parsnips, carrots, a Yorkshire pudding, amazingly succulent chicken, and then apple and BlackBerry crumble with cream. Yeah, I'm it's just ITT's pristian. It's the most delicious food. When I was growing up, that was the most food that we had was on a Sunday when one would cook that. Like she was a really good cook, but
she was a sparse cook. She never cooked quite enough, but on Sunday there was plenty, and I was quite greedy and always hungry.
And what is the weirdest final meal that you've had on any guest?
Offering up David, who is this extraordinary neuroscientist, like truly one of the most fascinating like scientist people, a scientific person I've talked to. He wanted a protein shape. He wanted to still be feeding his brain protein and I was like, but you're about to die well, And it was just what I loved is that he was just it was almost like the absolute denial that this was
his last meal. That was like, I'm still want to be feeding protein to my brain, which, by the way, for a neuroscientist, that's really on brand, Like that's really cool, but like super super, super great and weird. I love that answer, though we.
Couldn't be having a last meal with David Eagleman.
Then my last question is in your life, can you tell me about something that has grown out of a personal disaster?
Y Ah, When my father died of lung cancer at the age of fifty two, when I'm twenty four, I thought that if I lived till fifty three, I would have kind of broken that curse or whatever it is you call it. That's a benchmark of his life, so that every year that I've lived since then has felt like a bonus. But more than anything, I because I was acutely aware of how young that was to die, and as I got closer to fifty two myself.
I thought, wow, it really is just feel young. And I think more than anything, it is galvanized my thinking and desire to try and get everything I can out of every day.
Of my life that I have because he's ended so halfway through you know what he might have lived done to so that that has had a profound ongoing effect on that.
So whether you call that the.
Starst or not, I don't know, but it's absolutely galvilized me when they know I'm very impatient and I just want everything, and you know, I just feel like I'm running at life going I'll gobble it up. So that is what I think my father's death had that effect on me.
That's amazing, that's really that's really amazing.
And what's yours.
I think that there was a big change when I had Henry and I was a single mother, and I really realized that that sort of going off around the world making independent films was not something that I wanted to do with a tiny baby on my own, and that I couldn't necessarily make enough money doing that because it wasn't particularly well paid at all, and I knew I didn't want to be scrabbling to piece his childhood together.
So I made this very conscious turn into network television, which I'm eternally grateful for, but it was it was a sobering moment to move from the wildness of filmmaking and this kind of immediacy into very prosaic and formulaic creativity that sometimes didn't feel like creativity, and I knew the reason that I'd done it, and there was a heartbreak in it that was really difficult. But what came
out of that was this childhood. This eight years that I was fortunate enough to be on two television shows, paid handsomely, working with lovely people, and it wasn't going to change the world kind of necessarily what we did, but there was a steadiness and a kindness and a wonder in watching Henry have this childhood of having tea at home and oftentimes I could be there and that I could put him to bed, and that I wasn't worried about paying the mortgage, and I knew he was
going to be okay, and I could put money in a college fund for him, and all of these things and him turning out to just be this incredible person, calm and funny, and that like I thought that, I'd well, I'm giving up this whole thing, this dream that I've always had, and I'm embracing this other kind of a life. And I thought it was going to be terrible, and all that grew out of it was wonderful. Win win, yeah, absolutely, win, win,
win win. Darning Richard, you provoke and like an interrogation of life always whenever I'm with you, and I know that you do that with everybody else. That is so sincerely wonderful and amazing. And I know what profound sorrow you have experienced and how you have turned that into something that is a gift for everybody else will forever be in total awe of you, because that's what that's what you do. Truly amazing, amazing and wonderful. And I can't thank you enough.
Thank you for having me on your Zoo mini driver, brilliant, Thank you.
Thank you many Questions is hosted andritten by Me Mini Driver, Executive produced by Me and Aaron Kaufman, with production support from Jennifer Bassett, Zoey Denkler and Ali Perry. The theme music is also by Me and additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay Addison, O'Day, Henry Driver, Lisa Castella, Anick Oppenheim, a, Nick Mueller and Annette Wolfe, a WKPR, Will Pearson, Nicki Etoor, Morgan Levoy and mangesh At Tigadore