RICHARD E. Grant is heading into The Celebrity Traitors for the latest chapter in his long and varied career.
The Withnail and I star will when Claudia Winkleman’s BBC hit returns on October 1, 2026.
Away from the screen, enjoyed an extraordinary love story with his that lasted almost four decades.
Who was Richard E. Grant’s wife Joan Washington?
Joan was a highly respected voice and dialect coach who spent nearly 40 years working with some of ’s biggest stars.
Born in Aberdeen, she trained at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama before building a career helping actors perfect accents for stage and screen.
Her credits included Yentl, , The Bounty, The Favourite and The Witches.
Among the stars Joan coached were , Vanessa Redgrave, , and Ralph Fiennes.
She also worked for the Royal National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company.
How did Richard E. Grant meet Joan Washington?
Richard met Joan at the Actors Centre in London in December 1982.
He was a young actor from Swaziland – – who had recently moved to London when he attended one of Joan’s classes before hiring her privately to help him learn a Belfast accent.
Richard later recalled being immediately struck by her appearance and distinctive voice.
In 1994, he told The Independent: “She was teaching an accent session with a bunch of actors, and I thought she had the most wonderful voice and huge, sort of monkey eyes.
“She seemed fairly frenetic. I thought that she was really cute and all that. It was December 1982.
“I went to learn a Belfast accent from her and I then met her in this house, but she was still married to someone else.
“She was doing a play at the Royal Shakespeare Company and needed a black African accent.
“She told me that I was the only person she knew in London who could do this, and that I should come and make some tapes for her.
“I didn’t go home that night. We found that we had a fair amount in common, and that we liked speaking a huge amount.
“She seemed very un-English in that way. We just got on instantly.”
eventually embarked on a relationship together, and he later proposed after returning from a trip to what was then called Swaziland.
He got down on one knee at Heathrow Airport with a diamond ring, and the couple later married in a register office in 1986.
Did Richard E. Grant and Joan Washington have children?
and Joan had a daughter, Olivia, who was born in 1989.
They also suffered the devastating loss of their first child together, a premature daughter named Tiffany who died shortly after she was born.
Speaking on Desert Island Discs in 2022, Richard said: “Grief is something you have to navigate your way through and around and I don’t know that you ever get over it.”
He also became stepfather to Joan’s son Tom from her previous marriage.
Olivia has followed her parents into the film industry and works as a casting director.
In 2026, she welcomed a daughter of her own.
Marking five years since Joan’s death in an video, Richard said: “I would love more than anything for her to have held our grandchild.”
How did Joan Washington die?
Joan died on September 2, 2021, aged 71.
She had been diagnosed with stage four lung just two days before Christmas in 2020.
Announcing her death on Twitter, now , he described Joan as the “Love of my Life” and summed up their relationship with the words: “35 years married & 38 together.”
Writing in the Daily Mail after Joan’s death, Richard said: “To have loved one another for almost four decades has been the ride of my lifetime.”
The Celebrity Traitors begins at 8pm on and on October 1, 2026.
