Richard E. Grant has spoken openly about the time his father, who was an alcoholic, tried to shoot him when he was 15. The Celebrity Traitors star, born and raised in Swaziland, revealed that his late father, Henrik Esterhuysen, struggled with alcoholism following his divorce from Richard's mother, Leonne.
Gun held to head after Scotch poured away
During a 2022 appearance on the BBC's Desert Island Discs, the actor recalled the terrifying incident that took place after his father discovered him pouring his Scotch down the sink. "I was on the 11th bottle and felt something very cold on the back of my head, and it was a gun," Richard said. "I ducked and ran into the garden, and then he chased me and flicked on the garden lights.
"He found me and then got hold of me and said, 'I'm going to blow your brains out,' and I said, 'Go ahead and do it! Just get this over and done with.' He missed because he was so drunk, and then I ran away from home for a couple of weeks."
Love for father despite the horror
Despite the encounter, the 69-year-old has maintained that he still has a lot of love for his father, who died of lung cancer in 1981. "When I had psychoanalysis when I was 40, this absolutely extraordinary man said to me, 'Would you have preferred to have lived with your mother, who was sober, or with your father, who became an alcoholic?'" Richard told Davina McCall on her Begin Again podcast in 2025.
"He tried to shoot me when I was 15 when I emptied all his Scotch Supply down the sink, and I'd never thought of it like that, and I said I would have preferred to have lived with my father. So even though he was an alcoholic, or became an alcoholic after my mother left, the person that I knew and loved by day outweighed the monster that he turned into when he would down a bottle of Johnnie Walker."
Forgiveness and reflection
Noting that his father had one bottle of whisky a day, Richard reflected, "Come nine o'clock at night, there would be this personality switch, and he became unrecognisable." In a recent interview with The Times, Richard explained that he eventually forgave his father for attempting to shoot him. "You very quickly learn to understand that the person they turn into is not who they really are," he told the publication.
"When I saw my dad at breakfast, and he was sober, that is the person who I remember and love. He is still my lodestar, the person that guides my life. The horror of what he turned into was just a mask or a character. Addiction is something that people can talk about now and get help for, and I just wish that he'd lived in a time when he could have done that."
