Yahoo Lifestyle 'Saltburn' Actor Opens Up About His 'Monster' Father Allegedly Trying to Shoot Him as a Teen
An actor from the cast of Saltburn is opening up about a harrowing experience he once had with his late father.
Richard E. Grant starred as James Catton, father to Jacob Elordi's Felix Catton and husband to Elspeth Catton (Rosamund Pike), in the 2023 comedy thriller, but he has also endured some dramatic experiences in his real life.
During a recent appearance on the "Begin Again with Davina McCall" podcast this week, Grant revealed that his own father once allegedly attempted to shoot him.
Describing his father as an alcoholic and a "monster," Grant claimed the violent outburst was sparked after he, a teenager at the time, poured out an entire bottle of his dad's scotch into the sink.
"I thought, 'If I get rid of all of this, somehow that might stop his drinking problem for at least a week,'" he explained. But that wasn't how the alleged situation ended up going down.
Instead, the 67-year-old actor recalled being halfway through pouring out the bottle when he felt the gun at the back of his head.
"I ducked, went off, ran to the garden," he said. "He finally found me, and said, 'I’m going to blow your brains out.' I said, 'Go on, do it, just get this over and done with.'"
Grant, who remembered feeling "so angry" at that point, claimed his dad actually pulled the trigger, but fortunately, his drunken state affected his aim.
"Because he was drunk, it wavered," Grant said, noting that the bullet ultimately "went straight past" him.
Grant was saved by his dad's poor aim on more than one occasion, after previously telling Radio Times Magazine in 2023 that his dad allegedly tried to shoot him another time after he snuck out of the house, but the shot once again missed him.
Despite the complicated relationship and his near-death situations, Grant kept a relationship with his father for the next several years until his death from lung cancer at age 52, when Grant was 24.
"The person that I knew and loved by day outweighed the monster that he turned into when he’d down a bottle of Johnnie Walker," Grant explained. "The part that I remember now, about my father, was when he was sober."
