The Full Monty
Beloved British character actor Richard Griffiths bares all.
A respected character actor as familiar and rotund as your favourite armchair, Richard Griffiths, who sadly passed away in 2013, was best known throughout the world as Withnail & I’s lascivious Uncle Monty and Harry Potter’s malicious Uncle Vernon.
I was lucky enough to spend a little time with the actor back when he was busy promoting the film adaptation of The History Boys in 2006. As a tribute to the great man, here’s my feature, more or less as I originally wrote it.
Before shooting the classy movie adaptation, Griffiths toured the world with The History Boys on stage, his performance as irrepressible teacher Hector earning rave reviews in every language.
“We did London, Hong Kong, Wellington in New Zealand, Sydney, Australia and Broadway, all last year. “Before we went to America, a lot of people said we’d be back home in ten days. ‘Don’t be upset,’ they told us. ‘It’s Broadway. They won’t like it. It’s too highbrow.’ So we all went up very nervous, but there was a huge explosion from the audience.
“Later we discovered all these things about their cramming schools. We’re got Oxford, and they’re got the Ivy League. They’re the same. They have the same concerns that we do. Thousands of kids killing themselves at cramming colleges to pass the entrance exams to the top four universities. And fortunes are spent in America on this. So they got it in the States. They went nuts for it. We had 500 full houses and we could have played another year.”
Now back to where it all began. “We got our first tv when I was 12 years old,” remembers Griffiths. “Got our first radio when I was 15. And it only ever played Radio 1 and 2. Then I went to college to do my ‘O’ Levels, and that’s when I discovered the drama department. A teacher there, a wonderful guy called Ken Parkin who is alas no more, introduced me to things like Round the Horne (1965-1968). I had no idea all this fun was happening at Sunday lunchtime and I felt like a complete idiot, because the cultural life of Britain had completely passed me by.
“When I left school I became aware of how ignorant I was. I was ashamed of it, and furiously spent all my time trying to catch up. I read voraciously just to make sense of what people were saying to me at tech college, and realised that there was this enormous gap in my education. I was just so cross at the school for letting me down. What chills me is that in this day and age, not only are lots of kids uninformed about pretty ordinary bits of culture and history, but it’s cool to be dumb about it.”
Though originally Griffiths had aspired to be a painter, “a representational artist, and a very good one”, his exposure to British popular culture inspired him to set his sights on acting. Raised by deaf mute parents, Griffiths credits his father with helping him become a better performer.
“My dad was wonderful with body language. That was the main thing. Much better than I’ve ever been. Attention to those kind of details definitely informed my acting. You couldn’t lie to my dad. He was ferocious at knowing. He was right on your case. Through body language he could learn more about you than you would ever want to tell him, and it was very scary sometimes when he would nail someone down.”
Blink and you’ll miss him, but fans may not be aware of Griffith’s early role as Terrorist Number 3, in Superman 2 (1980). He was one of the guys with the nuke at the top of the Eiffel Tower. And at the time, the budding actor felt a duty to do his own stunts…
“I remember diving for a trigger that was going down a lift. I had to grab the thing before it went over the edge of the lift shaft and I did a flying dive. I should have had a roller board strapped to me so that I could have dived safely, but I dived without one and skidded along the floor and pulled tendons out of my arms that weren’t right for two years. And in the end, the shot was cut out! It was a valuable lesson I leaned about filmmaking: don’t kill yourself!”
It’s not worth it for a close up. “And certainly not for a wide shot because nobody’s looking. No one gives a toss!”
Kids, and a fair few adults too, obviously know Griffiths best as mean old Uncle Vernon in 2001 to 2011’s Harry Potter movies.
“Vernon was at his most powerful, domineering and awful in the first story,” comments Griffiths, “when Harry was at his weakest, smallest and least able to do anything. But as the stories have marched on, Harry has grown in power, stature and strength, and Vernon has dwindled. He’s now a very hunted creature. He’s terrified of all these magic people, and he’s got a very nasty shock in store.”
As you might expect, Griffiths is routinely hassled by kids on the street, some of whom realise he’s an actor but most of whom don’t. “They’re afraid of me because they expect me to be horrible. Sometimes I suppose I am.
“Some bloke came up to me in Tesco late one night, it was 11.30pm, and said, ‘Would you tell my son here you’re Vernon Dursley?’ I said, ‘No, I’m not here to entertain or patronise some 12 year-old, and what’s he doing up so late anyway? He should be tucked up in bed. I should be tucked up in bed, but I’m here, so get away from me, I’m on my own time here.’
“He was very confused, this guy. He didn’t know whether to have a go at me or apologise. I could see I’d upset him, but then again, he started it by upsetting me with his fumbled approach. And as I walked away I could see the father go up to his son, shrugging his shoulders, and the boy pointing and saying, ‘Yeah, that’s him. That’s Vernon.’ He wanted me to be horrible. Only Vernon Dursley would be as horrible as that to the general public.”
Older fans, of course, expect a Montyism, something about cats or burglary. “It’s endless. Most of the people who come up to me know it far better than I do. It’s twenty years ago now. To me, it’s water under the bridge. Long gone.”
Gone but not forgotten.
“Withnail & I (1987) is probably one of the greatest films I’ve ever been associated with, certainly one of the films I’m most proud to be attached to, and definitely one of the greatest roles I’ve ever played.
“I’m perfect now to play Uncle Monty, but I actually did it when I was in my thirties, and acted up. It was a proper job of acting, as far as I was concerned, and I was gutted, we all were, by the response. The reviews of the day damned it with faint praise. It did nothing. It came and it went, and we were gutted.
“The response was incredibly underwhelming, except with the university circuit, but it’s built up a huge fan base because it is blatantly honest and in your face in a very polite sort of way, and will never date because the concerns never change. Everybody goes through that transition from adolescence to adulthood, and it’s fraught. Some people make it, and some people don’t.”
What was your favourite Richard Griffiths performance, and why was it Uncle Monty?
I once saw Griffiths on stage in ‘Art’ with Paul Freeman and George Segal. All three were excellent as you’d expect. Yes, Griffiths mostly gets boiled down to Monty and Dursley, but I loved him in Naked Gun 2.5 - just hilarious!
He was a brilliant performer, very much missed.
What a wonderful, engaging presence in everything he did - great piece!