If there's a message behind these collected film diaries, it's that everyone in Hollywood's seen Bruce Robinson's acerbic Withnail & I. They all say so as the author ricochets from party to audition. And what can a poor Swazi boy do when Bruce Willis praises him? Jodie Foster knows who you are? "Never before or since," he writes, "have I read something that conveys what goes on in my head so accurately." It actually merits the perverse accreditation: Richard E. Grant is Withnail.

Grant's career is one forged from extraordinary luck, landing the vituperative Robinson's film and never looking back. He worked with the director again on the flabby How To Get Ahead In Advertising, but Hollywood was already calling. Breezing over the silly but successful Warlock, he was soon working with Philip Kaufman on wannabe controversial bio-pic Henry and June and Steven Martin's last good film, the underrated L.A. Story. Yes, he worries and frets (two-thirds is full-on paranoia), but the parts do have a habit of coming to him. When he lands in Los Angeles it's to the manor born. Martin asks him over. He runs into Brit-thesp pals who take him around. Everyone seems to like him. He gets invited to Madonna's ego-preening Valentine's party. Should he go to Robert Altman's for dinner, or "Susan Sarandon and Tim for a barbecue?" Only boyhood idol Barbara Streisand phases him.

The meat, though, belongs to those films fused for good or ill with the public consciousness. Grant was a lead, let's not forget, in the (not-so-bad-as-everyone-says) debacle they called Hudson Hawk. And part of Coppola's Dracula rep company. And two Altman pictures. Even a Scorsese.

"Oh, my sweet darlings, where, oh where, do I dare begin to tell this multi-million-dollar EPIC?" he starts of the Willis-ego-fest. The next 50 or so pages tell about how Bruce (who he likes) controlled production, changing the script at will. About the rampant self-regard of uber-producer Joel Silver. About the bond in adversity formed with scary co-star Sandra Bernhard. About weeks stranded in the seriously underwhelming Budapest. And about the mortification of attending a premiere for what you know is clunker. Flying home after production ends is a red letter day, coinciding as it does with the fall of Thatcher: "JOY to be FREE! OF HUNGARY, HAWK AND HER!!!"

Of course there's a lot Grant's not telling. Danny Aiello and Lori Singer rather get it in the neck, and a pre-star Sharon Stone's visit to the Hawk set is illuminating, but the lawyers paid strict attention, more's the pity. Perhaps if you got him drunk, but - bizarrely for this Withnail - he is physically incapable of holding his drink. This is also the man, of course, who said of namesake Hugh that anyone who knew him wasn't surprised by that incident. Read this book and believe it.

Grant himself is a self-confessed emotional wreck, devastated whenever he has to leave his family. (He writes movingly on the death of a prematurely born daughter just as Withnail goes into production). His writing style is excitable and conversational ("My tongue concussed with fear like so many jam doughnuts in a tight bag"), littered with punctuation and CAPITAL LETTERS. It takes some acclimatising. But this is Grant's book and he's free to paint whatever picture he likes, however he likes. That you come away thinking you'd be pleased if he came round yours, however, says probably more about the man than any trickery on his part. Just so long as he leaves his fine chums - the scary Bernhard and eminently slappable Uma Thurman - at home.