Richard E Grant reveals late wife Joan Washington wrote 'list of women he shouldn't date' before she died

Joan, 74, died in September 2021, eight months after being diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. The dialect coach had been married to actor Richard E. Grant since 1986.

The Death Of A Unicorn star, who has been open about his battle with grief following Joan’s death, has now revealed that his “hilarious” wife wrote him list of women he shouldn’t go on to date after her death.

Grant spoke while appearing on The Lulu Podcast: Turning Points, saying: “She was hilarious - a month before she died, she went through all the women, the women who were either single, divorced or available or widowed, that we knew, and she basically went through all of them like a lioness and gave me a reason why I shouldn't pursue any of them.”

He added: “And I knew how much she loved me by doing that...”

Grant also recalled meeting his “idol” Barbra Streisand and telling Joan about the meeting, saying: “Joan said - even though [Streisand] was then 79 years old – ‘If she wasn't married to James Brolin, would you still jump her bones?’

“And I said, ‘Darling, you know the answer to that’. And she said, ‘Well, I've got you, you're never getting away.’”

It comes as Grant revealed that he emails his late wife every night in an attempt to stay connected to her. He told Davina McCall on her Begin Again podcast: “I have no woolly spiritual delusion that she's hearing this, or that I'm going to get a response, but it somehow keeps the connection going.

"So I write to her – 'Dear J, today would really have amused you...' It makes it feel like that person is still there – it's an ongoing conversation."