Richard E. Grant has revealed his late wife Joan Washington made a list of women that he shouldn’t date a month before she died.
The dialect coach passed away in September 2021 at the age of 74, eight months after being diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.
Grant, 67, said Washington was like a “lioness” when it came to the topic of him dating again and “gave him a reason why he shouldn’t pursue” any of the women they knew who were single.
“They say you should never meet your idols [Barbra Streisand] and after I had this conversation with her and came back to London, Joan said - even though [Streisand] was then 79 years old – ‘If she wasn't married to James Brolin, would you still jump her bones?’” the Saltburn actor recalled on singer Lulu’s podcast Turning Points.
“And I said, ‘Darling, you know the answer to that’. And she said, ‘Well, I've got you, you're never getting away.’”
He went on: “She was hilarious - a month before she died, she went through all the women, 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.”
Grant explained that he found the gesture touching.
“I knew how much she loved me by doing that,” he admitted. “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.”
Grant also reflected on their grief when he and Washington lost their daughter while he was filming the 1987 comedy, Withnail and I.
“She was pregnant and in the last week of rehearsal, she went into labour prematurely at seven and a half months and our daughter was born,” he recalled.
“She only lived for half an hour because her lungs were too undeveloped. If she was born now they would have been able to save her, but they couldn't then.
“So exactly at this turning point of having got this lead role and first movie ever in my life it was absolutely underpinned by this terrible tragedy that happened to us. But we now have a daughter... we’re incredibly close.”
Grant and Washington married in 1986 and welcomed their daughter, casting director Olivia, 34, in 1989.
The actor announced Washington’s death in a heartbreaking social media post in September 2021, sharing a touching video of the two dancing together.
Last month, Grant revealed he keeps his beloved partner’s memory alive by emailing her every night.
“I have no woolly spiritual delusion that she's hearing this, or that I'm going to get a response, but it somehow keeps the connection going," he said on Davina McCall’s podcast, Begin Again.
"So I write to her – 'Dear J, today would really have amused you...' It makes it feel like that person is still there – it's an ongoing conversation."
If you have been affected by this story, advice and support can be found at childbereavementuk.org or you can call them on 0800 02 888 40.
