With Nails

By: Richard E Grant, Richard E. Grant

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Paperback | 16 September 2025

At a Glance

Paperback
336 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
2.4 x 13.3 x 20.0

Paperback

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‘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.

About the Author

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.

Industry Reviews

In these dashing diaries of his recent years in the movies, Grant shares with candour his wonder at this aberrant universe and its inhabitants -- Sunday Times

An exceptionally vivid and penetrating insight into Hollywood film-making . . . What most of us want is gossip about stars, and this is something the book delivers in spades . . . Qualifies for that exclusive niche reserved for film star memoirs that are worth much more than a casual flick on the bookshop shelf -- Observer

Lively, hilarious memoirs . . . The lovably nervous, marvellously bitchy Grant is blessed with a fluent style, acid wit and the eternal Hollywood outsider’s passion for name-dropping, rubber-necking and raspberry-blowing . . . Grant has produced a classic Withnail himself would be proud of -- Vox

The honesty and likeability of the man becomes addictive. It’s not hard to read two hundred pages in a single sitting . . . this is a fast, scenic and often bizarre tale related by a credible witness . . . It’s a star-packed savagely observed delight, and as a vivid psychological insight into one actor’s complete experience of a film, it really does stand alone -- Empire

Proves he can be as witty on paper as he has been on the big screen with this diary of his experiences working with everyone from Paul McGann to Steve Martin . . . an enjoyable read that goes to prove there is at least one true gentleman working in Hollywood -- Maxim

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