Clik here to view.
Thea Sharrock, who directed Richard Griffiths in the West End, recalls a devoted friend and an extraordinary actor
• See the Observer's obituaries of 2013 in full here
I still can't really believe Richard isn't here. His presence was always so strong, it's impossible to forget. "Hello bébé," he would say, in his gentle, smoky voice, and cup his delicate hands on the small of your back. You never felt safer, or more loved than in that moment.
Nobody could turn a phrase like Ricardo. His love and understanding of language knew no bounds. He would hang on to syllables like they were going out of fashion, squeezing the passion behind every word.
Richard was born to deaf parents – his mother from birth and his father from the age of five. I always felt this was the key to why he was such a sublime actor. An actor's ability to listen is his most important tool; Richard's was second to none.
He was a wonderful friend. His warmth, his generosity, his kindness and his loyalty were somehow old-fashioned in their fullness. Never would he put himself first. But he was naughty too. We met in 2000, working on Art with Paul Freeman and George Segal. It was a heaven of instant appreciation and trust, but above all I remember the laughs. We four remained lifelong friends – Ricardo was always our glue. In 13 years Richard and I worked together seven times. We never argued once. But he could drive me crazy. He was always the last to learn his lines, yet always the most precise. Once he learned a line it went right to the core of him and he would never forget it. He knew that the job of a performer is to be in the moment, to be present for your audience, so he always kept working, digging deeper, searching, long after a show had finished.
I miss his smile. Big, like the Cheshire Cat, with that little neat gap between his teeth. I miss his cheeky laugh. I miss the careful way he'd look at you, listening intently. I miss the pleasure he took in smoking. I miss him squeezing a fresh lime to make the perfect gin gimlet, his nails always a little long. I miss seeing his eyes light up when Heather, his beloved wife, would walk into the room. And his amazing ability to make the world feel warmer, more colourful. He observed everything and had a gift for sharing it. It took practice to know when to let the stories roll and when and how to stop them. But it didn't take me long because he let me love him with all my heart.
Reading this on mobile? Click here to watch video
After the last night of Equus in London the producers threw a party for all who'd been involved. On that night Richard gave me a present, a plain gold bracelet, "to go with your ring", he said. I was blown away. It was the most beautiful gift and it did indeed go perfectly with my wedding ring. I have worn it every day from that day to this. A piece of him. I wrote him a thank you letter and received 15 pages in return. Anyone who was lucky enough to receive a Richard Griffiths letter has kept it. His beautiful handwriting and poetic turns of phrase so full of love and careful thought, even when tearing apart a particular politician, journalist or injustice in the world.
The last letter I received was in February, a month before he died. None of us knew he was going to die, but he had feared it, and so he wrote, typically, to let me know where he was and that he was OK. Since he died I have kept that letter within reach at all times, not ready to let him go. How can you let go of someone so full of the wonders of life, so eternally curious, so completely understanding of the human condition? Thank God he was so brilliant at passing it on.
It's hard to choose the special times, because every moment with him was special and unique. I will always remember watching him while he waited in the wings to go on at the top of a show – moments before in his dressing room doing his best impression of Eeyore meets a five-year-old who knows he's cute: "Do I have to go on?"; now quietly collecting himself, breathing deeply and lightly bobbing up and down on his toes. Or watching him gently blush as Julia Roberts kissed him on the cheek and gushed at him backstage. And oh how we laughed hysterically as he would unfold gorgeous tales of his myriad grandchildren, each one described with such clarity of perception I felt I knew them when we met at his funeral.
Saying goodbye to him for what became the last time, I squeezed him a little tighter, a little longer than usual. "I'll see you when I'm older," we both said, a phrase he had coined, and I lingered, holding his hand, trying not to cry. I couldn't bear to go. As an actor and as a friend, he gave himself to you so totally, that you never felt alone. I'll miss him for ever.