Grant speaks of his and Joan Washington’s love, and his grief, after he welcomed their first grandchild without her.

Richard E. Grant shares heartbreaking message about his late wife 5 years after her death

Grant speaks of his and Joan Washington’s love, and his grief, after he welcomed their first grandchild without her.

By Leigh Blickley

September 3, 2026 11:26 a.m. ET

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Joan Washington and Richard E. Grant. Credit:

Ian West/PA Images via Getty

- Richard E. Grant remembered his wife, Joan Washington, in a touching video message.

- The actor said he has “unbelievable gratitude” for her presence in his life, five years after her death.

- Grant and Washington were married for 38 years before she died of lung cancer in 2021.

Richard E. Grant shared his thoughts on love, grief, and life in a touching message on his late wife’s death anniversary.

The *Can You Ever Forgive Me?* star posted a video message on Instagram Wednesday, Sept. 2, five years after his wife, British dialect coach Joan Washington, died after a battle with lung cancer.

“Five years ago today, my beloved wife Joan died at 7:30 in the evening, and we were holding each other’s hands, and she drew her last breath,” Grant, 69, began. “And, in one sense, five years seems incredibly long and, simultaneously, the blink of an eye. And reflecting back on what it’s like to grieve somebody, I feel unbelievable gratitude that I had almost four decades with her, because more than anybody in the whole world that I have ever met, she got me. I got her, and that seems to be the kind of holy grail gift that I never anticipated I would find in my life. I sure did with her.”

Grant and Washington, who worked with the likes of Penélope Cruz and Jessica Chastain, were married in 1986 and together for 38 years until her death in 2021. They shared a daughter, Olivia, who just welcomed her first baby, a boy, with husband Florian Wirtz.

A smiling Grant called Joan “feisty and challenging and hilarious” before noting how he would have loved to see her hold their grandson.

“Our daughter, you know, had a baby 12 weeks ago. I would love more than anything for her to have held our grandchild, but that’s not to be,” he shared as Nat King Cole’s “When I Fall in Love” played.

He continued, “But being in this [unintelligible] cottage where she died, I’m surrounded by everything that we made together and collected. So, even though I’m totally physically alone here, her life is here as though she might be in the next room. In a sense, she is, and always will be.”

Grant noted that people keep telling him, “with the best intentions,” to try to move on or meet someone new, but he admitted he’s “not arrived at that station.”

“So, without sounding morbid, I want to celebrate her fifth anniversary,” Grant concluded. “Happy anniversary.”

Richard E. Grant and Joan Washington.

Richard E. Grant/Instagram

Grant has opened up about mourning his wife in the past, explaining that the title of his 2022 memoir, *A Pocketful of Happiness*, was inspired by the advice Washington gave him and Olivia while she was sick: “to try and find a pocketful of happiness each day.”

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While promoting the book, Grant told the *Happy Place* podcast that Washington’s words became his and Olivia’s “mantra for trying to navigate our way through this abyss that grief plunges you into.”

The* **Saltburn** *actor said that writing the memoir “was like resurrecting my wife, because I went through all the stuff of how we met and all the good things that happened to us [over] almost 40 years together, career and personal.”

“So that was amazingly helpful,” he shared.

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In the book, he wrote of Washington, “Could we love each other more? I don’t think that’s possible. We complete one another, like a pair of well-worn bookends, our lives in large volumes, bound together, in between.”

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Source: “EW Celebrity”