Richard Griffiths

More than Uncle Monty, and bigger, and poorer

The Observer, October 2005

‘I hate being the subject of photographs,’ Richard Griffiths says not long after being photographed. I had heard that he especially didn’t like being pictured from the neck down for fear it might show him as fat – which he is, and which is the singular defining feature of his presence in a great many films and plays, inseparable from his talents as a sensitive, funny and compelling actor. I met him in a rehearsal room in Waterloo where he is preparing for Heroes, a hit French play translated by Tom Stoppard. There was a poster for the show on the table in front of him, Griffiths on a bench between his co-stars, Ken Stott and John Hurt, holding a walking stick and exhibiting his girth.

‘That’s not girth,’ he says. ‘That’s a para-umbilical hernia. I don’t like it. Here are two pretty boys [he points to Stott and Hurt]. He’s pretty, and he’s pretty. I’m not. I’m ugly.’

‘But this is how you are,’ I say. ‘It’s great.’

It’s a vanity thing. I’m vain enough not to want to appear in stills.’ He quotes an old Jewish proverb: everybody hates the way they look, but no one complains about their brains. ‘And that’s true. I’ve always hated the way I looked, and I’ve never complained about my brains.’

to read on download the Adobe PDF