Actor, bookworm, turtlenecked Rise of Skywalker scowler, and all-around lovable rapscallion Richard E. Grant is one of the world’s most enthusiastic and highest-profile admirers of Barbra Streisand, besides Streisand herself, of course. Who can forget the 2019 promotional cycle for Grant’s performance in Can You Ever Forgive Me, when he shared an impassioned fan letter he sent to Streisand at age 14? Her perfunctory tweet back sent this sweet, sweet stan to the verge of tears. Now, after his 2019 Oscar loss, Grant finally got his hands on the Hollywood hardware he deserves: a photo-accurate two-foot-tall sculpture of Barbra Streisand’s face. On Thursday afternoon, Grant posted a video to his Twitter, beaming with joy in front of the disarmingly large sculpture, which shows a young Babs in profile with a ponderous look.
In the video, he can’t stop smiling as he recounts how he told Streisand about the sculpture last year (some artist worked a year on this) and Streisand called him “insane.â€
“I’ve been a Barbra Streisand fan for over fifty years. When I saw her last summer, I told her that I was having a sculpture made of her face, and she said, ‘you’re insane.’†And I said, ‘yeah, I know.’ And she said, ‘no, no. You. Are. Insane.’ Here it is, and I couldn’t be happier.
Grant also posted a picture of him “honoring†Barbra, “who favours being filmed from her left side.†A totally normal thing to know about someone whom you commissioned a sculpture-of for personal use.
Is the sculpture … getting bigger? It looks like it’s getting bigger. That thing is detailed. You can see the threading on the eyebrows. If anyone else did this, it would be weird. When Grant does it, though … it’s still weird. But in a fun eccentric way. This is also all very awkward, as we have commissioned a 4-foot-tall papier-mâché bust of Richard E. Grant.