With Nails

‘You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, especially if you’re in the book like I am’ – Steve Martin

‘An exceptionally vivid and penetrating insight into Hollywood film-making’ Observer

The star-studded, hilarious memoir from Richard E. Grant revealing life behind the camera. When, in the summer of 1986, Richard E. Grant was cast as the lead in Withnail and I, his whole world shifted and he was set firmly on the path to international stardom. With Nails is his outrageous, irreverent and brutally funny account of that time and the years afterwards, of his self-doubt and anxiety on the route to Hollywood, and of all the extraordinary, mad, brilliant people in the film business.

From drinking himself incoherent so he could film Withnail and I to a night spent in Paris’s red light district with a world-famous couple, to working with Hollywood’s biggest actors and directors, Richard E. Grant – always eloquent, always honest – has documented, in his own inimitable style, what it is to become a film star. A rare classic, there is no book quite like it.

Now part of the Picador Collection.

Author Biography

Richard E. Grant was born and brought up in Mbabane, Swaziland. He has featured in over sixty films, including Withnail and I, L.A. Story, Dracula, The Age of Innocence, The Player, Jack and Sarah, Gosford Park, Bright Young Things and Penelope, as well as numerous television shows. He is also the author of By Design: A Hollywood Novel and The Wah-Wah Diaries: The Making of a Film. He lives in London with his family.