Richard E Grant’s 10 favourite songs
Tom Hanks may generally be considered a more accomplished actor than Richard E Grant, but if we can agree that both men are beloved offscreen as charming and affable fellows, it has to be noted that Grant achieved his reputation despite playing an almost endless parade of villains, scallywags, and pompous bastards: three archetypes Hanks has rarely, if ever, tackled.
If you first became a REG fan, as many did, via his legendary performance in 1987’s Withnail and I, you might have been intimidated at the idea of meeting the man capable of inhabiting such a blunt, unhinged, and misanthropic chap. But, of course, as the world came to learn, he is basically the antithesis of Withnail in real life; a uniquely approachable, optimistic, and humble person who seems, even after 40 years in the business, to be stunned at his own good fortune. He’s also not embarrassed about admitting his own squareness.
It’s a decent bet that Withnail would have thrown you out of a car for listening to Barbra Streisand. Grant, by contrast, is easily in the top percentile of Streisand fanatics on Earth, as he has often discussed in his writings and spoken word tours. As a child, Richard wasn’t just an admirer of Babs’ music; he was madly in love.
“When I heard [Streisand] belt through ‘Gotta Move’, I seriously thought this gal must be psychic,” Grant wrote in his 1997 memoir, With Nails: The Film Diaries of Richard E Grant.
“How could she possibly have sung this song without knowing that I was counting down the years before I would fly this coop, become an actor, marry her, and hear her sing to our two children on a clear day? I read in a magazine that having such fantasies was ‘perfectly normal and just a passing phase’,” he added.
“It was an attempt to explain to worried parents why their kids had suddenly gone ballistic over some idol. How could they understand my depression when I read that, having divorced Elliott Gould to make way for me, [Barbra] was now involved with Prime Minister Trudeau?” he exclamied.
Quite a bit more recently, in 2011, Grant showed enough self-restraint to include just one Barbra Streisand track on a list of his ten favourite songs, as shared with the site Two Paddocks.
Richard does not, however, show much of an interest in any of the music recorded concurrently with his own career. The “newest” selection on his list, the Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams are Made of This’, dates from 1982, as was selected because it gave Grant nice memories of his days waiting tables in Covent Garden.
Pretty much every other tune is a classic standard of the middle 20th century, when Grant developed his romantic ideas of what show business was all about.
Suffice it to say, part of what’s made Richard E Grant an international treasure is that he is a genuine old soul in the way few movie stars are these days, so while his playlist might not have sat well with Withnail, it’s certainly a nice feel-good option on a rainy February day.
Richard E Grant’s 10 favourite songs:
- Sam Cooke – ‘Try a Little Tenderness’ (1964)
- Eurythmics – ‘Sweet Dreams’ (1982)
- Aretha Franklin – ‘Respect’ (1967)
- Frank Sinatra – ‘In the Wee Small Hours’ (1955)
- Percy Sledge – ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’ (1966)
- Bob Marley and the Wailers – ‘No Woman No Cry’ (1974)
- Joni Mitchell – ‘A Case of You’ (1971)
- Paul Simon – ‘American Tune’ (1975)
- Nat King Cole – ‘When I Fall in Love’ (1957)
- Barbra Streisand – ‘If I Loved You’ (1945 show tune, covered in 1985)
