Getting to know...richard e. grant

● I try to find some happiness in every day. My beloved wife Joan died two years ago. Four days before she passed away, she sat myself and our daughter down and said, “I know you’re going to be sad but try and find a pocketful of happiness in each day”.

That’s really helped us. It’s also given us permission in that when we do find joy and happiness in something, not to feel guilty about it. You don’t get over grief. You go around it.

So, I follow Joan’s mantra every single day, of trying to find something, even if it’s things like the weather’s great or the train was on time – to be mindful of those things rather than thinking you’ve got to win the lottery, a Nobel Prize or an Oscar.

● When you’ve lost someone, you get on with things because you have to. There’s always that longing to share everything with my wife but, of course, I can’t. I navigate grief on a daily basis. You have good days and bad days, good moments and bad ones. You just have to accept and embrace it, I think.

● I’ve kept journals since I was 10 years old. What I know about keeping a diary is that it’s in the moment that it’s written.

When I was 10, I woke up on the back seat of a car and inadvertently saw my mother “in flagrante” with my father’s best friend in the front seat! So, then I started keeping a diary – that’