feeling listless

Who? Withnail (without I) as played by Richard E. Grant, during the famous tea room scene ... 'I want the finest wines known to man, I want them here, and I want them now!'
Why? In his autobiography, ‘With Nails’, Richard E. Grant describes how the rest of career has been coloured by this part and how many of his greatest roles have been because his fellow actors wanted to work with Withnail. The measure of the actor is that he doesn’t feel constrained by this.  Unlike some who’s future work has been defined by a single role, he thanks the world for the opportunities it has given him; the chance during the nineties to work with a string of iconic directors (Altman, Coppola). Since then he has been no less visible in career terms, but has been appearing in seemingly lower key productions, a clever move, which has allowed him to play the roles he would simply never see on the big screen. In a film of ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’ he would have been a pompous courtier not the masqueraded hero; knock his appearance (and performance) in ‘SpiceWorld’, but he was there in a moment of pop culture history, ‘A Hard Day's Night’ now; in ‘Trial and Retribution III’ he gave a classically dramatic performance, by turns sinister and touching; in ‘The Curse of the Fatal Death’ as another instant Doctor Who we glimpsed how Withnail might have been in the TARDIS, now that Marwood had already been there. Chin, chin.
first appeared November 2001; finally