Oscars 2019: Richard E Grant says he ‘won’t be taking home an Oscar’

Richard E Grant may have won the Independent Spirit award for best supporting actor, but he is adamant he will not be taking home an Oscar.

“When Mahershala Ali wins tomorrow we will all be standing and cheering because he’s won everything so far and he will win everything tomorrow night, as we know,” Grant told Sky News.

“So for the other four nominees, it’s for us to enjoy the ride and the party of it all.”

While the Can You Ever Forgive Me? actor has been performing for more than 40 years, his career did not get off to a promising start.

“My drama professor at the end of my training said to me ‘you’re too weird looking to make it as an actor, you should be a director because that’s where your talent is’.

“To get told that – and you believe that when you’re impressionable – and to end up being in as many movies as I have been and now all these nominations for all these awards is surreal.

“It’s very nice to prove somebody wrong, even though he said it to me with all the best intentions.”

Luckily he paid no attention to his professor’s advice and has gone on to become a household name.

In fact, his career has bloomed over the past year, and he is clearly enjoying it, notably on social media where he has been sharing his time in Hollywood and his Oscars journey so far.

Grant said: “I had dinner with Olivia Colman and Lady Gaga two nights ago in Betty Davis’ old house – how often can you say that in a sentence?”

He has been sharing some of his recent star-studded bashes and red carpet walks with his daughter, casting director Olivia Grant.

Glenn Close – who took home the Indie Spirit for best actress – was also accompanied by her daughter – Annie Starke.

A fellow actress, she stars in The Wife, playing a younger-version of her mother’s character.

Starke said the film was in homage to her grandmothers “who were two brilliant young women who were married quite young and never really pursued their dreams”.

She said: “My dad’s mother in particular was a chemist in the 1940s, which is kind of unheard of, she worked for GM, her team invented fluorescent lighting and then she worked on the Manhattan project and then she got pregnant and they fired her.”

But the big winner of the Indie Spirits was Barry Jenkins, who took home three statues, including best feature.

He dedicated his best director award to the women behind If Beale Street Could Talk, while urging Hollywood to hire more female directors.

No stranger to Oscar mishaps, he explained what he thought of this year’s blunder-ridden lead up to the big day.

He told Sky News: “The Academy is in a period of extreme evolution and with that there’s some growing pains and I think what we’re seeing now is the caterpillar shedding its skin and trying to figure out how fly.

“But it will – and I think the progress it has been making is ongoing and continuing.”

However – like Richard E Grant – he does not seem to fancy his chances of taking home a statue from this year’s ceremony.

He has not even prepared a speech this time round after La La Land was incorrectly announced as best picture and Jenkins was unable to give his winner’s speech for his 2017 film Moonlight.

He said: “I don’t write them – and the last time I wrote one, things got all chaotic, so I will just wing it if I get up there.”

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(c) Sky News 2019: Oscars 2019: Richard E Grant says he ‘won’t be taking home an Oscar’