1 day Ago By Kitty Chrisp
Richard E Grant’s wife Joan Washington died in 2021 (Picture: LEON NEAL/AFP via Getty Images)Richard E. Grant has revealed his late wife Joan Washington gave him a list of women he wasn’t allowed to date a month before her death in 2021. Acclaimed dialect coach Washington died aged 74 after being diagnosed with lung cancer in 2020.
Ever since, the Withnail and I star has been open about his grief, often taking to social media with candid self-facing videos talking through his emotions. While explaining that he does not expect to fall in love again, Richard has opened up about Joan’s ‘hilarious’ list of women he was forbidden from dating once she’d gone. Talking on The Lulu podcast, the Saltburn star recalled the time he met his idol Barbra Streisand.
On returning home to Joan following the memorable encounter, she asked whether Richard would ‘jump her bones’ if Streisand, then aged 79, wasn’t married to James Brolin.The pair had been together for almost four decades (Picture: David M. Benett/Getty Images for Somerset House)‘I said, “Darling you know the answer to that,”‘ Richard recalled, to which Joan responded: ‘Well, I’ve got you, you’re never getting away.
’‘She was hilarious,’ reflected Richard, continuing: ‘A month before she died, she went through all the women who were either single, divorced or available or widowed, that we knew, and she basically went through all of them like a lioness and gave me a reason why I shouldn’t pursue any of them.https://www.instagram.
com/p/DH0kQ9mtnS0/‘I knew how much she loved me by doing that...
I have no expectation that I will fall in love again, which is not to say that it couldn’t or wouldn’t happen, I’m not there on a dating app trying to find it. ‘I feel fulfilled and sustained without feeling like I’ve lost my better half, which I have.’ This comes after Richard reflected on his difficult childhood last month, explaining what it was like growing up with an alcoholic father.
During an episode of Davina McCall’s podcast Begin Again, Richard revealed his father tried to shoot him when he was 15 after the youngster poured his dad’s Scotch supply down the sink.Luckily, the trigger faltered. The Withnail & I actor has opened up about grief since her death (Picture: Murray Close/Getty Images)In the same episode, Richard also revealed Washington’s last moments.
‘On the day she died, I was sitting talking to her all day and holding her hand. I felt that at about 7.10pm her hand was starting to get colder,’ he recalled.
‘I thought, this must be the end. At 7.30pm she died.
The conversations began in bed in January 1993, then stopped 38 years later, still talking and holding hands. ‘To have that from another human being, to be completely seen, is the greatest gift.’Announcing the news that his beloved wife had died four years ago, Richard shared a video of the pair dancing and declared her the ‘love of my life’ and ‘giver of life to our daughter Olivia’, adding: ‘Our hearts are broken’.
The couple had been together for 38 years and married for 35.Got a story?If you’ve got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the Metro.co.
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