Richard E. Grant's fan letter to Barbra Streisand gets lovely reply 47 years after he sent it
You might not know this, but even massive celebrities have major fangirl moments.
Take Richard E. Grant, for instance, who tweeted a letter he'd penned at age 14 to his idol, Barbra Streisand, alongside a picture of himself posing outside her house.
What followed was the most delightfully pure exchange between Streisand and "lifelong fan" Grant, who's now 61 years old.
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If you look at the letter closely, you'll see that 14-year-old Grant was very concerned for Streisand's wellbeing and offered her a break at his family home in Swaziland, south-east Africa.
After stating that he and his family were "very big fans" after seeing Streisand in Funny Girl, he said that he had been following her career "avidly" and owned all her records.
"I am fourteen years old I read in the paper that you were feeling very tired and pressurized by your fame and failed romance with Mr Ryan O'Neal," wrote Grant. "I would like to offer you a two-week holiday, or longer, at our house, which is very beautiful with a pool and a magnificent view of the Ezulwini Valley. Which the Swazi people call Valley of Heaven. I think you will agree when you see it."
He explained that because the local cinema only shows films for three days at a time, there'd be little chance of her being "mobbed in the street."
"Here you can rest," wrote Grant. "No one will trouble you and I assure you you will not be mobbed in the street as your films only show in our one cinema for three days, so not that many people will know who you are, so no chance of being mobbed. Please consider this respite seriously. You will always be welcome."
Though Streisand didn't take up Grant's very sweet offer at the time, his tweet got a lovely reply from Streisand 47 years later.
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Grant — who just received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for Can You Ever Forgive Me? — posted a gloriously gushing reply to Streisand's tweet.
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It didn't end there, though. Grant wasn't lying when he said how much Streisand's reply meant to him.
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He posted a photo that his friend took of him as his daughter read out Streisand's reply to his letter.
We're not crying, we just have something in our eye.
Topics X/Twitter Celebrities
Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.
A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.
Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
