Richard E Grant: 'I loved sniffing the walls at Downton!'

(Image credit: Nick Briggs)

Richard E Grant has admitted that he loved sniffing the walls at Highclere Castle when he filmed his four-episode guest role in Downton Abbey as suave art historian Simon Bricker.

The actor has a famously strong sense of smell and even launched his own unisex perfume Jack earlier this year, and he confesses that he is very fond of smelling everything he can, however strange!

"The walls at Highclere have a very distinct smell of wood, varnish, furniture polish, leather and fresh flowers!" Richard tells TV & Satellite Week.

"I’ve compulsively 'nosed' everything in sight ever since I can remember, so it was an olfactory delight to be at Highclere. And there was the added bonus of finding new customers in the cast for my perfume!"

Caren has been a journalist specializing in TV for almost two decades and is a Senior Features Writer for TV Times, TV & Satellite Week and What’s On TV magazines and she also writes for What to Watch.

Over the years, she has spent many a day in a muddy field or an on-set catering bus chatting to numerous stars on location including the likes of Olivia Colman, David Tennant, Suranne Jones, Jamie Dornan, Dame Judi Dench and Sir Derek Jacobi as well as Hollywood actors such as Glenn Close and Kiefer Sutherland.

Caren will happily sit down and watch any kind of telly (well, maybe not sci-fi!), but she particularly loves period dramas like Call the Midwife, Downton Abbey and The Crown and she’s also a big fan of juicy crime thrillers from Line of Duty to Poirot.

In her spare time, Caren enjoys going to the cinema and theatre or curling up with a good book.