The terribly sad news last week of the passing of Joan Washington, wife for 35 years of actor Richard E, Grant, brought a torrent of condolences for Grant and his family and celebrity memories of Joan and her decades-long work as a dialect coach. What is perhaps not as well known is that she had more than one Star Wars connection beyond Grants appearance in The Rise of Skywalker; Joan was the dialect coach for Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman on The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones.
Washington worked alongside a number of notable actors on various productions throughout her decades-long Hollywood career. That includes Ralph Fiennes on 2012’s Great Expectations, Glen Close on 102 Dalmations, Cate Blanchett on 2004’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Anne Hathaway on The Witches and both Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and Stars Wars: Attack of the Clones.
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Grant, who recently appeared in Disney+’s Loki TV series, was Oscar-nominated in 2019 for the film Can You Ever Forgive Me? He met Aberdeen-born Washington in 1982 after she worked with him on a series of regional British dialects.
In a joint interview with the Independent in 2011, Grant recalled their first meeting, saying: “I met her at the Actors’ Centre in London. She was wearing a boiler suit and had fairly short, cropped hair and Kicker shoes, and was chain-smoking, which I thought was insane.
“She was teaching an accent session with a bunch of actors, and I thought she had the most wonderful voice and huge, sort of monkey eyes. She seemed fairly frenetic. I thought that she was really cute and all that.”
The actor also has a stepson, Tom, who is Washington’s son from a previous marriage.
Belated condolences to Richard, his family and to Joans friends and colleagues.
