The actor was born in Swaziland and his father Henrik Esterhuysen was the last Minister of Education before the British Protectorate s independence in 1968. As a 10 year old he inadvertently witnessed his mother s adultery with his father s best friend in the front seat of a car. After his mother s departure his father became so distraught and got so drunk that Grant ended up as a boy having to parent his father. Once after he d disposed of a crate of his father s Scotch Whiskey Grant said He tried to shoot me but missed because he was so drunk.
A psychoanalyst linked Grant s breakdown at 41 to a father whose world had come crashing down at the same age. He said this revelation lifted an enormous burden from him and dissipated the anger he felt. He absolutely adored his father who was full of remorse in the mornings after his drunken rampages and is he says his daily guide for how to live an honourable life sober .
Richard E. Grant
Jamie OliverJamie Oliver s father introduced him early to hard work. As an eight year old he would help out in the pub his parents Trevor and Sally still run in Essex. He was probably nine or 10 when he started preparing vegetables in the kitchen. Dad has always expected a lot of graft from me. A lot of physical effort. And certainly enough obedience. I was just scared enough of Dad which I think is important. A little bit of fear doesn t hurt. But he was a very loving dad.
Jamie Oliver with his father Trevor Oliver
Rick SteinRick Stein s father Eric killed himself when his son was 18. Our relationship certainly still has an impact because it was not an easy one. He was immensely charismatic very intelligent and very charming to lots of people but not really to me.
I m sure he liked me he probably didn t have the energy with me at home to go that extra distance to make me feel wanted and special. My second wife Sarah was made to feel special as a child and the difference between me and her is everything. She looks on the bright side and I don t.
There was however a fun and reassuring side to his father too and Stein wondered whether he might have been overdoing his negative influence. But he insisted I do get quite tearful when I think about his death and its ramifications. If you are made to feel a bit inadequate when you re young one of the things you do if you can get away with it is overcompensate.
Rick Stein and inset his parents
Dawn French
French now 57 was also 18 when she lost her father to suicide. She said I still have sadness about it. Massive sadness. And I think it s been a centre point of my life what happened with my dad. It was she said just like a bomb went off in our family.
As a child and teenager French had felt empowered by her very funny father. A key moment for her came when hot pants were in fashion and dressed in a very short pair she was about to go to a party. I ve always been a big girl and shouldn t really have been wearing hot pants. But he told me I was completely beautiful and how amazing I looked in them. I went on cloud nine to this party and I ve actually never left that party. It was armour.
Dawn French Insert Dawn's father Denys French with her older brother Gary in 1955
Lenny HenryHenry was born to Jamaican immigrants in the Midlands and his father who had worked in a foundry died when he was 17. He was very unknowable. You never saw his face you just heard his voice Stop the noise. Leave your sister alone. Move I want to watch the cricket.
My older brothers Seymour and Hilton because they were grown up when I was a kid went to the pub with him and talked about things like the shape of a beer glass the beauty of the stroke in cricket. I never had a conversation with him like that. He was this unsmiling bloke in the corner reading the paper for quite a lot of my life.
Lenny Henry
My dad never did hugging never said I love you my parents never said it. It wasn t until my mum was poorly near the end of her life that we started saying I love you I love you I love you .
Mick Hucknall
By the age of three Mick Hucknall's mother had abandoned him and left the family home. His father Reg was a barber who worked a gruelling six day week but had breakfast and dinner on the table for his son every day. It was incredible what my dad did. He did all the laundry all the washing up all the house repairs. He even grew vegetables in the garden. He sacrificed his whole way of life for me and our nucleus of two males in the house.
But when puberty struck his fantastic relationship with his father soured. He was unhappy at grammar school and when he began drinking two or three pints a night his father was powerless to stop him. The Simply Red frontman said his upbringing left him with absolutely no social skills.
Hucknall and inset with his father
I even struggle a bit now. I don t know how to communicate in a conciliatory way where you don t say what you think is true you say what you think that person would like to hear that would make them like you. It s actually been something incredibly I ve only discovered since having a child myself . But Hucknall inherited something of his father s determination. Probably what helped me get established in music was that I just didn t stop. I kept on going.
John Cleese
My relationship with my father was enormously strong John Cleese said. He really did the emotional mothering that I was not getting from my mother who could be anxious and depressed and we were very very close.
John Cleese and inset with his father Reginald
But as I got older 19 20 21 he seemed to be unwilling to let go of the father child relationship. He would sit there giving me lots of advice often about things I knew more about than he did.
Martin Amis
Amis had an enormous affection for the late Sir Kingsley although he was very absentee as a father. He only got really interested in me when I started reading properly he said. But he added Whenever you saw him on his way to his study he would always say something funny and it was always because of the way he said it the wit the use of words and that went an awful long way. Meeting him around the house was always a pleasure. And he did tell us stories at night and they were great stories.
Martin Amis with father Kingsley
As Amis grew older the relationship deepened. It was Hitch his great late friend Christopher Hitchens who said he d never seen a father and son get on as well as we did. It was also a great literary friendship too. Of his dying You do feel a sense of levitation when your father dies that you re sort of coming up into the front rank of those facing death that parents are sort of intercessionary figures.
Sir Richard EyreEyre spoke of a very tormented relationship with his father a man who had endured a brutal upbringing and who on his return from serving in the navy to become a farmer in Devon didn t take much interest in who his son was. And who I was turned out to be the polar opposite of who he was. So he then set himself up in opposition to me. So if I expressed a love of arts he would deride the love of arts.
Later sitting by his father s body Sir Richard said he saw with great clarity that he d spent the whole of his life trying to prove he was worth something on his father s terms. And he d completely failed. Friends have told him that his father was very proud of his success but he never expressed it to his son.
Sir Richard Eyre (Photo Andrew Crowley)
When Sir Richard cast Sir Ian Holm as King Lear in a memorable 1997 production his sister asked him why he d put their father on stage. He hadn t intended to but said he might have mentioned him anecdotally in rehearsals. It might have been an accretion of anecdotes but probably what is more true is that all fathers are King Lear and that I wasn t teaching Ian to emulate my father it was just that Shakespeare had extracted some kind of truth about the way fathers are in a position to act as regal bullies and many of them take that opportunity.
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