Hugh Grant Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters | GQ

only yesterday on the plane I was going through my old notes section of my phone and I found a whole thing on reasons not to do soap because I always try and find a reason not to do a job because acting scares me so much Morris I was in a very dark place actually it wasn't dark because what I'd given up I was writing and producing radio commercials and I was extremely happy doing it and I wasn't interested in acting anymore then my agent who I hadn't spoken to for months rang and said oh they they want to see for this Merchant Ivory film and I said no III can't we bother and my brother who's a banker and very bossy who happen to be at home sick that day I was living with him said don't be ridiculous you've got to go you need some money I'm sick of paying for you so he made me sort of get dressed up and I went and and they were kind enough to like me that was the first sort of propulsion into movies I I didn't know what to expect it came out very well people sometimes say to me are you worried about playing a gay role and I wasn't at all Nevernever sort of struck me as if that was in any way difficult or dangerous or controversial I remember the Venice Film Festival the world premiere of the film I'm sitting next to James will be and James ivory and Ishmael merchant in the front row of the sort of circle and at the end of the film the audience really loved it and they stood up and they clapped for a long time and then the tradition at Venice is that we the filmmakers stand up to accept the applause what I had forgotten is that my suit was much too tight and I done done it and I'd undone my trousers quite early in the film and I completely forgot to do them up so it did look at that at the end of this gay film I stand up and bow solemnly to everyone next to my co-star with my my trousers undone for weddings and funerals I got the script and I thought well there must be some mistake my agent has sent me a good script so I rang him up and I said I think there's been a mistake you send me a good script they did that once before actually with Jerry Maguire and I said I think there's a mistake here they said yes sorry that is a mistake that was meant for Tom Cruise with Four Weddings it was meant for me it anyway it was only an audition and I went along and and I auditioned among the Muppets they were all around me and I remember I think he's quite well the director looks like he likes me but the writer really hates me that was Richard Curtis and he admits he did hate me he had a completely different conception of that part he'd written it in his own image he thought it was him and didn't think that it should be someone who he thought might get the girl he thought it should be more like him more kind of nerd issue them glasses anyway he was he had his arm twisted and yeah I got the part the haircut became quite popular yeah with some I always hated it a haircut on the clothes the clothes are meant to be terrible from the haircuts meant to be terrible shortly before we stopped shooting that film at one lunchtime they said okay everyone all the crew into this room were going to show you some cut footage of what we've shot so far it was meant to be morale-boosting and it played to sepulcro silence nothing has ever been worse except for Owens bit Rowan's bit gonna laugh but the rest of it was just abominable and we all trudged back onto the set broken men and women and we remained in that mood through finishing the film's through editing it through the first look at it we just thought well we're all gonna have to go and live in Peru and then they had this screening in Santa Monica and Los Angeles and the audience loved it that's very odd the speech pact was very much written in convoluted syntax if I were to ask you could you possibly ever see your way I mean I'm not saying you would but if you might to fording in love with me all that stuff that's what that's Richard writing that stuff and then my new orally directed that film and wanted it even more messed up he said look I don't you eat a little bit as a stirrer if you look smooth so you know mess up the lines and and break them up and all that so I did all that and then when that film was was a success possibly subliminally I let it bleed into other parts which was a big say Sense and Sensibility Emma Thompson adapted Sense and Sensibility to go Angley to direct it and they offered me that part and I saw the part of Edward Ferrars and I said well he's a bit of a hesitant in love Englishman I don't think I should do that again and they said no no we know you can do it very differently so I said alright then and then I did exactly the same angley was I think it was his first non Taiwanese film he didn't hadn't mastered yet the art of how to talk to British insensitive British actors I remember doing my first scene with them up and I thought we were marvelous and we went up to hang after was sitting there at the monitor he said what you thinking what you think and he went very boring and that was very disheartening and he famously said to Kate Winslet at the end of her first day of shooting you you will get better so he was he was scary but very charming Notting Hill the the goodwill from Four Weddings was dissipating fast and Richard wrote this other film and it was based on us something he actually happened to a friend of his who was a kind of very unfamous living in Notting Hill who happened to fall in love with an extremely extremely world-famous person who I'm not allowed to mention and she with him so it was but it was based on that such an obvious idea for a film I can't believe it's never been made before and it just just seemed like it was gonna be dynamite and then they managed to persuade you know the then biggest star in the world Julia Roberts to do it and and then we managed to not screw it up too badly and he's you know it was obviously a mega hit at that moment because it's really properly romantic and that's the key to his films they're called romantic comedies and he actually is funny the jokes are good but what's special is that they are genuinely romantic because he's a romantic oral Richard it was always in love and being rejected all that's real rather than fake as that's kind of Hollywood romance [Music] Bridget Jones's Diary you know Daniel cleavers quite sort of West London smooth upper-middle class come on why they came to me maybe she thought I was right for it I mean all all the way through those fluffy films for wedding is not al it had amused Richard and his gang his wife everyone that people thought I was that nice fluffy character because they knew that I wasn't I was much closer to for instance Daniel cleaver so I think it was fun for them to then slop me into a role that was closer to the roomie about a boy it's a novel by Nick Hornby and a really good one possibly it's slightly based on himself maybe but I'd been sort of tracking it for ages and it was being made by different company and that director didn't want me and then it got shifted over to the whites brothers and I met them and we all got on really well and they would they were making it actually with De Niro's company and and I enjoyed that aspect of it I loved I loved hanging out with Bob we're going night clubbing with him I felt very cool doing that the boy in about a boy needed to be someone nerdy a loser someone who's gonna get bullied and we found Nick and he he was a great actor but he was too good-looking so we gave him a haircut terrible clothes but I see now the dishes triumphed he's a massive star will in about a boy's Northland and he's more he's more demotic trendy cool you know the clothes I had them work were cool for that period it was it was a great part and transforming for me and what I've now realized because you might not hear it or see it but because I'm doing an accent in that and really it's doing a performance that's much further away from me it was very releasing and I'm much better when I'm doing that that's what's come home to me in the last five years get away from yourself and I'm actually better when you're when you're being someone else moving like them talking like them it takes care of the self-consciousness problem Love Actually well that the Prime Minister is really again written rather like Richard Curtis himself and so when I read this I thought this is gonna be a huge hit but I don't really want to be that same character again I'll get crucified so I said to Richard you know can't just be that guy from Notting Hill and from Four Weddings he said no no it's quite different you know I'm much tougher and harder I would write tougher harder yes yes he is then then I just did exactly the same characters the dancing scene was a terrible cloud hanging over the whole production for me and you know it's hard enough to dance if you're English and middle-aged even with six pints inside you but by yourself so stone-cold sober at 7:00 in the morning in front of a film crew to freak out was gonna be misery not only that but I thought the scene had the capacity for being the most excruciating scene ever committed to celluloid and there are plenty of people who still think it is but equally there lots of people who seem to love it Cloud Atlas no good no one good its kind of slightly about reincarnation as I recall or all my people are vile out of the blue the very cool witch house keeps mum wanted me to play five or six parts in this extraordinary the biggest the most expensive independent film ever made I went to meet them to see if it was some kind of joke on me and it didn't seem to be and I liked them a lot so I did it and I you know it was seemed irresistible to play a cannibal from the 23rd century and then I I thought well I'm bound to be good at that that's because that's so fascinating and then I don't really think about it too much until I was suddenly on a mountaintop in Germany with my teeth and my makeup and my tattoos and I thought I have no idea how to do this and I had one other which I was kissing come on man you look at him like you want you want to to eat him if I don't have that face give me a funny line I could do that not sure I was very good as the cannibal that's quite good as some of the other parts and then I think all actors like to be evil I think because it's it smells true I've got this horrible feeling I'm 57 that we are evil and that our veneer of civilized and niceness is very very thin so when you're allowed to be your true evil self it just sort of smells right feels right it's fun to play in Florence Worcester Jenkins I am half good half bad I'm a marvelously supportive husband and sort of manager to Meryl Streep's increasingly deranged amateur singer but you're supposed to think I mean people didn't think what's his real motive does he really love her or is he in it for himself and hopefully people you know think both simultaneously I certainly thought he was both which i think is also very human we can be loving unselfish and deeply narcissistic and selfish simultaneously and that was what he was Errol's a very good singer in real life and probably that's why she was able to be bad so well so she would sing badly and when she first demonstrated that at one of the read-throughs you know I just thought well that's genius and it was incredibly fun it really makes you laugh but like all funny things as you repeat them you know you laugh a little bit less to be expected she knew that and so sometimes if I was on camera watching her and she was off-camera she'd just dial it up double it to screw me up make me laugh she was very good at that actors like playing actors or people in show business they think this will be fascinating but actually the world hates actors quite rightly the key to that character funnily enough is the same key to the next film I did Paddington to narcissism that all narcissists I don't know why I keep get her off of these parts but anyway that's incredibly human that really were just obsessed with looking out for ourselves and it was certainly the key to to Bayfield in Florence Foster Jenkins he's he was a crap actor the real Bayfield or at least very moderate very mediocre and yet dazzled by the limelight the limelight the limelight and he had therefore the same disease as poor forints Worcester Jenkins who was the world's worst singer just wanted to be on stage at Carnegie Hall everyone looking at it do you meet these people they are very common in life and anyway so that was definitely the curse of Buchanan Paddington tune into poor king who wrote and directed it likes to tell his story that he wrote a part of him washed-up narcissistic old actor called it Hugh and sent it to me first they dead actually changed the name and they sent it to me it perhaps that attacked but nevertheless the letter that came with the script did say we've written this narcissistic monster of a washed-up actor and we thought of you it was very difficult to get past that letter but then you know it was a funny script and I thought I could do that part that film Paddington you know isn't there when you're shooting it obviously because he's created in the computer afterwards dead you have a choice a choice every time I was doing a scene with the bear I could have stick with a bear's head on the end which was actually a very sinister thing I didn't even like looking at it it looked like a kind of warning to bears don't come into this area you have your head cut off or you could have this stand-in lady who was the same height as Paddington she was great but that that III ended up with a stick became quite fond of the stick Indian Wiest have lunch together a very English I was about to do something else I was having dinner with Stephen Frears one night he said no don't do that I got something else and he sent me this these scripts and I thought television I don't know television but it was him and I loved him we seemed to you know we made a successful film together it was a it's a fascinating story it's a very interesting part of history it's my childhood the book was brilliant in that it brought out the black comedy of the whole thing very mischievous and then the screenwriter he's extraordinary Russell T Davis you know he's a proper genius so I had to say yes in the courtroom scenes when there's long long pushings on my face no actor really likes it because you start well you think I'm banging character here as the camera dull is in for 16 bloody hours you know after sort of 10 seconds you think I'm slipping out of character or getting self-conscious and by a minute into it you know what's happened to my jaw I can't even feel it anymore actors decide to do jobs for various reasons but I think the two main ones is it a very fascinating and showy role for them and the other one is will this thing work but I've always been absolutely fixated on will it also be an entertaining thing because if not this is a wank what's the point of it so for me this one had both I thought people are definitely going to enjoy this because it's such a weird story it's just sort of tragic and repulsive and it at the same time funny and equally this is a great part you know he was a man who's I sort of knew the breed my mother was at Oxford in the 50s and the friends she'd made there used to come to dinner sometimes when I was a kid and they were very Jeremy Thorpe very smooth charming and reptilian so I knew that breed and then here was this sort of epitome of the one of those guys with all this not just dark secrets and and a weird sort of nasty narcissistic side but also tragedy Jeremy thought was never able to be himself never able to love someone in his own way which happened to be gay and that's deeply tragic you know that was that's that's one of his tragedies and then his other tragedy as a more sort of classic Greek or Shakespearean one which is that one event in his life gradually brings him down having built himself up to with a terrific career and life reputation this thing just destroyed [Music]

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Id: c2YoUbAEFTI

Length: 16min 30sec (990 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 29 2018