Richard E. Grant's A Pocketful of Happiness a tribute to Joan Washington

But today, he's best known for his roles in such films as Withnail and I, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Wah Wah, Star Wars: The rise of Skywalker, even Spice World alongside the Spice Girls.

On television he's graced our screens in Doctor Who, Downton Abbey and Loki, he even had a guest appearance in season six of Game of Thrones.

Born in Swaziland in 1957, he survived a tumultuous childhood, heading to London in 1982 with dreams of making it as an actor.

He signed up for accent coaching, to rid him of his colonial vowels; the legendary voice coach Joan Washington said it would take two sessions, and it did.

A month later, she phoned him, after someone who could speak Siswati, native of Swaziland, to help her with some coaching for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

He suggested he come over that very night. He wore a cream cable-knit sweater, they ate a home-made beef bourguignon and made the recording in the living room after dinner.

They talked, and flirted, late into the night. He'd missed the last train home and asked if he could stay in the spare room.

The pantomime lasted 10 minutes and they ended up in bed.

They were married in 1986, and for close to 40 years they were inseparable, navigating the highs and lows of Hollywood together, parenthood, life and loss.

She inspired him, challenged him.

And when she was dying with terminal lung cancer in 2021, she gave him one final challenge - "to find a pocketful of happiness in every day".

And now this promise to his wife has become a new touring show, and a book, A Pocketful of Happiness.

The tour is a one-man show, where he tells stories from his life, entwining tales from his extraordinary time in show business, reflections on love and loss, and celebrating the book.

The book is a diary of sorts, written mainly during the final year of Washington's life, documenting her final days, but moves back and forth between the past and present, as he contemplates their years together.

We're speaking almost a year to the day since Washington died.

He's Zooming from a room at his London house, the furnishings as eclectic as his film roles.

His daughter Olivia's cat - she's away at a wedding in Turkey - comes to sit on his lap halfway through and stays, purring and content.

It seems wrong, in some ways, to be talking about the death of his wife, about grief, and loss.

Most publicity interviews are a little more upbeat, full of anecdotes and one-liners.

Grant seems, not flat, but restrained, emotionally restrained more than anything - it almost feels wrong to be talking to him about a promise he made to his dying wife.

Grief means such different things to different people, but I can't imagine what made him want to turn the worst experience of his life into a performance, to capture it in the written word.

"On New Year's Eve after Joan died, I posted on Instagram on how she'd challenged Olivia and I to find that pocketful of happiness in every single day," he says.

"There wasn't a lot to it."

A publisher contacted his literary agent to see if he'd be interested in writing a memoir, and the answer was an unequivocal no.

"And then when I told Olivia about it, she thought it might be a way of navigating my grief, that it might be a tribute to Joan, something that would detail our relationship and our careers, something that would be positive and full of hope."

While he felt terribly alone, just the idea that more than a quarter of a million people had viewed the post, and more than 1700 people had commented on it, friends and strangers, made him realise that others were feeling the same way, had suffered similar circumstances, loved and lost.

"It was confirmation that almost without exception, especially during this wretched pandemic, someone has suffered a loss or losses in tandem with mine," he says.

"Whatever cynicism I'd accrued like an old crab-shell in my 64 years was cracked and dissolved by the compassion, kindness and love I've been engulfed by this past year.

"The consequence of which is that I feel completely vulnerable and exposed, yet protected."

He hopes people will come away from the show, finish the book, with a sense of optimism.

"I'm telling a love story and talking about that - it's funny and joy filled in contrast to what happened in the last eight months of her life," he says.

"Those eight months out of 38 years are a very small amount of it, although it's hit me like a car crash right now, the show is not in any way a misery fest, I certainly hope people have a very fine evening."

As for the book, he began writing a diary when he was 10 years old.

"I inadvertently witnessed my mother bonking my father's best friend on the front seat of a car late one evening," he says.

"We were coming back from a cricket match and I was obviously asleep on the back seat and then woke up to the rhythmic movements of the car, which is something that you can well imagine!

"I obviously couldn't tell my father or my mother or my friends, so to try to understand what had happened I started keeping a diary. And it's continued to be something I've done every day to make sense of the world that I live in."

During Joan's illness, he says, writing was the only vestige of control he could cling to.

"I wanted a record of everything we shared, 'for better or for worse, in sickness and in health' honouring the marriage vows we'd made in 1986," he says, quoting Martin Amis, who in Inside Story, said "somehow, the very act of composition, is an act of love".

"That's been my intention in writing this diary ... I hope my scribblings will give you an idea why I loved her so utterly and completely for 38 years."

While both book and show delve into his most private life, there's plenty of the public side too.

Withnail and I (1987) was his first film and still one of his career highlights.

"It completely changed my life financially and career wise and gave me a film career which I never thought would happen," he says.

"In my final assessment in 1979, my drama professor said I would never make it as I was tomb-stone featured and was lightweight as an actor. The fact that I got a movie, let alone had a movie career ever since, is still such a surprise to me.

"The irony is, when Withnail came out, a few of the reviews described me as tomb-stone featured and lantern-jawed, all the things he warned me about that would stop me being successful."

Writing and directing Wah Wah in 2005, a film loosely based on his own life, "was an extraordinarily rich experience".

In 2018, he starred alongside Melissa McCarthy in Can You Ever Forgive Me? and was nominated for best supporting actor in the Academy Awards, as well as Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Awards and the BAFTAs. For all its successes, the best thing to come from that experience, he says, was his lifelong friendship with McCarthy.

"That film was such an incredibly happy experience and we became great friends as a result."

He's also starred alongside our own comedic queens, Kath and Kim, aka Gina Riley and Jane Turner, in Kath and Kimderella (2012), playing Alain, a character who takes a shining to Sharon, played by Magda Szubanski.

He likes the idea of getting McCarthy, Riley, Turner and Szubanski together in the one film.

"I had one of the funniest times imaginable making Kath and Kimderella," he says.

He likes Australia too, having worked here several times, including My Fair Lady for the Sydney Opera Company in 2007, in 2006 for Wah Wah, and he's just shot for a film called Captain Nemo on the Gold Coast earlier this year.

There probably aren't too many actors who've played such varied roles over their career. The Spice Girls dubbed him Old Spice for Spice World in 1997; he starred alongside Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady in 2011.

Yet he says Washington was the one woman in his life who saw him for who he really was.

"To be truly seen by another human being was her greatest gift to me," he says.

"Amputees talk about phantom limb syndrome. That's me without Joan. Legless but walking. Tongue-tied but talking. Limbless yet lugging myself here, there and nowhere ... how long will this last?"

At 7pm her breathing slows down quite suddenly. Stroke her hand and keep repeating, "It's all okay, my angel. It's all okay. Don't hold on. We all love you so. So, so much.

After each intake of breath, the gap until the next inhalation gets longer and longer. At 7.25, I thought that her hand felt like it was getting cooling in mine.

Was I just imagining this? No, it is getting colder.

Do I let go of her hand and call Olivia to come? Can't let go now.

Then another breath, and count the seconds before the next one.

None comes. Her hand is noticeably colder. Lean in and listen.

Nothing.

She died at 7.30pm.

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