(Credits: Alamy)
Tue 26 August 2025 21:45, UK
Everyone gets starstruck, no matter how cool they think they are, or how famous they get, there’s always a special someone who will get the knees trembling.
There’s a reason that the phrase ‘never meet your heroes’ rings true, but it’s often not due to the unfriendliness of the hero in question, more that those meeting them simply go to pieces in their presence. And that was certainly the case for Paul Rudd.
Despite being a veteran of almost 40 years in the acting business and working alongside such luminaries as Michael Douglas, Patrick Stewart and Bill Murray, Rudd still struggled badly when faced with an English actor from one of his favourite films of all time.
That film was the 1987 cult classic Withnail and I, and the actor was none other than Richard E Grant. Rudd’s meeting with Grant came at the 2019 Oscar ceremony, where the elder statesman recalls: “Paul knelt down in front of me and claimed he couldn’t look me in the eyes as he was too starstruck. To which I quipped, ‘Arise, Sir Paul, and pull yourself together, boy!’”
Rudd pulled it together well enough to go on to work with Grant on this year’s A24 movie Death of a Unicorn, which opened to mixed reviews back in March, before following it up with another A24 comedy, Friendship with Tim Robinson.
Death of a Unicorn has the somewhat ludicrous story of a father and daughter who accidentally kill a magical beast, only to be hunted down by its angry parents. Standard. It was also originally due to have a score by legendary horror director and composer John Carpenter but sadly he dropped out.
As to why Rudd was so dumbstruck by Richard E Grant, you have to examine a couple of things, notably just how popular Withnail and I is among creative types and the fact that Rudd was 18 when the film was released in 1987, which is pretty much the perfect age to watch the tale of wanton drinking and hedonistic escapism.
Directed by Bruce Robinson, Withnail is a debauched, ultra-quotable comedy based on Robinson’s own experiences as a struggling actor in Camden in the 1960s. Starring Grant and Liverpudlian Paul McGann, who would go on to be a Dr Who, the film has become a rite of passage for students everywhere, prompting road trips, drinking games and endless posters on walls.
Now seen as one of the finest British films ever made, Withnail stands out as something of a love story to the United Kingdom, filmed on location in the Lake District and in London, it is so convincingly shot that it is difficult to realise it is a film from the 1980s rather than the 60s in which the story is set.
Grant, meanwhile, has seen something of a renaissance in his career over the past few years, twinning an active social media presence with movies including bathtub-licking posh people romp Saltburn and HBO’s industry comedy series The Franchise.
He can be seen in Netflix’s Thursday Murder Club movie and will be in a period drama named Savage House. Rudd for his part is filming the final part in the Avengers movies, Doomsday and will also be seen in a forthcoming Jack Black comedy called Anaconda.
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