Richard E. Grant can't shake his teen obsession with Barbra Streisand.
The actor fell in love with the diva when he saw Funny Girl at the age of 12 and admits he was gutted when she married James Brolin 20 years ago, because he thought he had a chance of romancing his idol.
"The day that James Brolin married her I felt like I'd been stabbed in the back because my chance was gone!" the Brit says. "I know you're supposed to get over this past adolescence but I'm a 62-year-old man going on 17."
During a recent SAG Conversation panel, Grant confessed he once wrote Streisand a fan letter when he was 12.
"I had seen her in Funny Girl when I was 12 years old and then I saw her in What's Up Doc? and all my hormones were going completely berserk," he explained. "I used to subscribe to two movie magazines and according to one of them she was having trouble with (boyfriend) Ryan O'Neal, so I wrote, 'Dear Barbra Streisand, we have a lovely house in Swaziland in Southeast Africa, the smallest country in the southern hemisphere. We have a pool. Nobody will know who you are here. Please come and stay'.
"I finally met her when I was doing the Altman film The Player in L.A. in 1990, at a party..., where a 19-year-old Winona Ryder, who was with Johnny Depp at the time, was quoting every line of the (film) Withnail and I screenplay at me. And while she was fan worshipping me, I saw Barbra Streisand over the room. I was like pushing her (Ryder) aside and she was trying to convince me to meet with Francis Ford Coppola to get into Dracula.
"I spoke to the hostess of the party and asked her if I could meet the great Babs. I had a 22-minute conversation with her that I will never forget. The first thing she said to me is 'Are you stoned?' And I said, 'Absolutely not, I'm on a high meeting you'. I've since met her subsequently.
"My poor wife has had to tolerate this absolute obsession with Babs for 35 years of marriage."
