Richard Griffiths: 5 Greatest Ever Movie Moments

3. Withnail and I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEoCd1HN_fI This is an often overlooked British black comedy that helped launch the career of several actors. The film is worth checking out because it's pretty funny--and pretty depressing at times--but Griffiths steals the show with his relatively small role as the eccentric Uncle Monty. He has this sort of British sensibility about him, this aloof, nonchalant, proper manner...while spending a whole minute making sexual innuendo about the growth of carrots. Please note that he's not actually talking about carrots. The uncle is probably the most memorable thing about this movie, with his bumbling antics and very, VERY awkward comments that are pretty obviously homoerotic. In every scene he's in, he just steals it. The movie itself interestingly enough stars Paul McGann and Richard E. Grant, two men who would later go on to play the Doctor in Doctor Who (though Richard E. Grant's performance was as the noncanon "9th Doctor," before the series was renewed in 2005. He'd later go on to be in the series 7 Christmas Special as the villain). What's interesting to note is that Griffiths was actually considered twice to be the Doctor. Even more interesting was that, in Harry Potter, Dudley Dersley, Griffiths' character's son, was related to the Patrick Troughton, the second actor to play the Doctor. Funny how every British actor is connected to Doctor Who...