Richard E Grant recalls last words he whispered to beloved wife Joan Washington before her death-Mel Evans-Entertainment – Metro

Richard E Grant recalled his wife’s death in his upcoming memoir (Picture: PA)

Richard E Grant has remembered the final words he whispered to his beloved wife Joan Washington moments before she died last year.

The actor’s wife, voice coach Washington, who worked with stars including Penelope Cruz and Jessica Chastain, died in September 2021 aged 74, eight months after she was diagnosed with lung cancer.

Reflecting on her death in his upcoming memoir, A Pocketful Of Happiness, Grant remembered the morning of September 2, which would be the day Washington died.

He wrote of how she didn’t wake properly that morning, after doctors had warned him the day earlier she may die that evening, and he sat stroking her hand and ‘talking softly about some of the daft things we’ve done’.

Grant revealed his final words to Washington later that evening, as he encouraged her to let go: ‘At 7pm, her breathing slows quite suddenly. Keep repeating: “It’s all okay, my angel. Don’t hold on. We all love you so. So, so much.”

‘After each intake of breath, the gap until the next inhalation gets longer. At 7.25, I thought that her hand felt like it was cooling in mine.’

The pair were married for more than 30 years (Picture: Getty)

Grant with Washington and their daughter Olivia (Picture: AFP)

At 7.30pm Washington died, with Grant calling for their daughter, Olivia, ‘to come quickly’.

He said, in an extract obtained by Daily Mail: ‘Feels like my heart is going to explode out of my chest, such is the intensity of this grief.’

‘Even though we had warning that this was imminent,’ he noted: ‘NOTHING can properly prepare us for this moment.’

The Withnail & I star – who also spoke of the ‘extraordinary kindness’ of the new King Charles III after Washington’s diagnosis – went on to write that ‘in Gwyneth Paltrow-speak, we’ve now been de-coupled by death’.

In his memoir he also recalled the kindness of King Charles following Washington’s diagnosis (Picture: Tim P. Whitby – Pool/Getty Images)

The actor, who described his new memoir as the ‘love story of my life’, married Washington in 1986 and they had a daughter, Olivia, now-32. Washington also had a son, Tom, from a previous relationship.

Washington, from Aberdeen, trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama and had nearly 40 years’ experience in the film industry as a voice and dialect coach, working with stars including Anne Hathaway, Vanessa Redgrave and Emma Stone.

Among her early projects in the mid-1980s were Yentl, starring Barbra Streisand, Highlander, and The Bounty, featuring Mel Gibson and Sir Anthony Hopkins.

More recently, she worked on features such as The Witches, where she coached Hathaway for the part of the Grand High Witch, and Yorgos Lanthimos’s black comedy The Favourite, where she worked with Stone.

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