Hugh Grant In Conversation | BAFTA New York

and also I think in a way reflects life you know it's life is funny and dark at the same time and it's rather odd the way that we have to move you know tend to push dramatic representations into such strict genres I wanted to start with Florence pastor Jenkins you you've been somewhat less of a constant presence in the last few years but this is a major part in a major movie opposite Meryl Streep what made you decide to do this particular movie what are you right that I am you're right I was I had kind of moved on a bit I was doing other things I was doing politics and I seemed to have a child a week and so I was not I've not been very focused on show business over the last few years but then Stephen Frears who's a supporter of hacked off the political stuff I've been doing he just kept saying calls to a film and I thought he was just drunk and then he to my great surprise sent me a script that was genuinely funny and moving and I liked the sort of slight grotesque element of it and it had this extraordinary nuanced complicated part for me which is something I'm not accustomed to and so I was you know and plus he's a classy director and the small matter of Meryl Streep you know it was a I had to do it the the carrot the carrot forints Foster Jenkins for those of you don't know is I first encountered her name on a list of the ten least likely celebrities an heiress who filled concert halls precisely because she could not sing a note and you mentioned you very self-deprecating about this the amount of the level of nuance that this role has but do you really feel that way about a lot of your well I really don't feel that way ok good I was just going for a cheap laugh nobody Oh even it is a complicated role because you can't quite tell if he's if he's good or bad and I liked that he doesn't fit into a easy goodie baddie kind of category at least for a lot of the film and I thought that would be fun and yeah was Meryl Streep what was she like I just picture her Barrett being born onto the set with a retinue of servants and you know perhaps an entire team of people and you know is she intense well there's no retinue apart from big Roy who's have been her makeup guy since 1974 or something you know who's a a great mine of fantastic showbiz stories and bitchiness and apart from him I didn't notice any right in you at all but is she intense well yes I mean I don't think you get to be that brilliant without enormous dedication so that that in itself is alarming I mean not just the scale of her talent but the scale of that it's quite a new yorky thing actually I've come across it in New York actors before it's a real like acting czar kind of quasi religion and you know for the average English lovey who's you know basically learn your lines and try not to bump into the furniture dear it's it's intimidating I did actually want to ask you about that the whole idea of preparation there is a school of thought and I think it's become more prevalent probably since since the 70s when De Niro was coming up that if you're going to play a cab driver you go out and get a hack license or if you're going to play a boxer you train for a year so forth do you have you ever done anything like that no but and of course the traditional British Way is to slightly sneer at that and then everyone quotes the Laurence Olivier Dustin Hoffman's story you know Oh Marathon Man yeah you know acting whatever it was but I have found I will say this I think the Americans are right and we're wrong when it comes to film acting definitely without a hundred percent because some over the years doing productions where you've got English actors and then a couple of Americans you notice it very much in rehearsal or the read-through the English are giving it everything lots of welly darling you know and and then the American is mutters like this and you think I'll come on you know and actually I think they are dead right because what they're doing is saving it up for the moment you know weeks later when there's actually filming the camera and they're in close-up and because you only have a finite resource of freshness and unfortunately freshness is what the camera wants more than anything and you know it hates well-rehearsed repeating of stuff and it loves something absolutely minted in the moment and that was one thing that Meryl was especially surprisingly brilliant at is that every take completely different completely different performance whereas you know most of us are thinking oh I had a performance and I just give me one more take to do it again and I don't like him but in fact what's good about her she's completely makes it up again I was very impressed by that what was you're working a relationship like did you have any rapport that you worked out any particular things that you had to iron out anything no it helped when I realized that she couldn't see me at all because she's I don't think I'm revealing anything she wouldn't reveal but she's good she's very short-sighted but chooses she's not wearing glasses in this film character thing and she doesn't like to wear lenses because the camera can pick them up so actually even if you were Meryl Streep and I was Hugh Grant I could be Denzel Washington and she wouldn't so you're just you're just an impressionist blob of colored well I don't know I thought I might be I think but she definitely I mean it's not to say she's acting in a vacuum because she's listening very carefully and you don't ever think she can't see me but it's yeah let's let's travel on the Wayback Machine for a second and let me ask you how how did you become an actor how did you decide to become an actor well it was um it was a accident really because I I liked acting I liked Eileen I liked doing it at school and showing off and all the classic you know psychology of that but I didn't plan to be an actor but when I was at university there was a guy who was a graduate there called Mike Hoffman who went on to make films and he put together a amateur film and said you know I need to act as Hugh because I'd done plays at Oxford he said would you act in it and I said I now don't really think so and he said oh come on come on Victoria Studds go be in it who was a really hot student so I said all right and and we did it and I didn't think more about it and after I've graduated in that summer I was off to do at the end of the summer I was gonna go into another degree at another university we had a screening of this film and very much to my surprise at the end of it agent said do you want to be an actor and I said it's very nice of you but not really and then and then I thought actually that would be I need some money so I'll do that for a year and then one year turned into 35 so you weren't one of those one of those kids who was doing constant pageants and reciting poems and things for your family or any of that sort of thing this was yeah I did alas yeah yeah but that's not quite the same as wanting to be a professional actor my my recitations were always surprising to my parents cuz what I didn't know was that I had a completely different accent at school than I had at home because my school was not contrary to people think a posh school at all and my parents for various reasons is not their fault had posh accents I had a posh accent at home but when I was apparently reciting at school then they become and listen it was good afternoon to smash him up we were having to say psychic up so yeah I grew up with two accents and two personalities were you you were a bit of an athlete weren't you in school um well yeah I played rugby and I was remarkably brave really I know I said myself but only out of I was brave out of cowardice because I found that I spent the first couple of years of voiding tattling and then I found that hurt more than if you tackled with incredible ferocity and violence so I became a fierce tackler so you take you taught yourself blood loss then yes littleman excellent and I still like to hurt people I'll try to keep that in mind how you you went on to do you probably a breakthrough I was trying to think of what that would be I guess Morris maybe yes James ivory who I just had the pleasure of interviewing a couple of weeks ago he still speaks very highly of you that's very nice and you shared the prize of the Venice Film Festival with James trilby will be will be for that for that for that performance yes and that was wasn't that the up to the next level after that for you yes and then very quickly down from that level what happened well I was a bit of a slag and just accepted everything that came along including some quite dodgy mini series and things like that and I hadn't learnt a lesson that if you if you've got a reputation for a second of doing quality stuff you've got to keep the quality up and so I that the quality sync and I need to have another boost too you know with four weddings to make everything pick up again you you made you made some really interesting movies between those two though like impromptu I see you're like oh god please don't bring up Lee have the white warm but I just did did were there any of those that you enjoy that you would watch again that you would recommend well I think if I was very drunk or smoked a lot of pot I would definitely watch the lair of the white world and that is the stoners absolute favorite film which Ken Russell and I play an RAF officer who I don't know what I do I I I cut people in half who turn into worms and things like that and yeah I suppose I could watch that for a laugh but I I don't really watch anything I've done very much you you began with Four Weddings and a funeral two to cultivate and have offered to you this persona that we now think of as a Hugh Grant sort of persona on screen but before that I was so surprised to see that that aspect of you come forth because in movies like impromptu you were you were the pursued you were you were more I guess you would say I'm not certain I wouldn't go so far as a passive but you're definitely not Judy Davis is a whirlwind in that yeah yeah she is she's the man and I'm very much the innocent little flower that she's trying to deflower was that a case of just you know I I try to ask actors this every time I talk to them how does it happen that you are known for a particular thing and then there would be a phase of your career where you're known for another particular thing and then there will be yet another and at all I always wonder how much control do you have over it how much foresight is there is there a design or is it just cosmic forces randomly well I think it's a bit of both I mean with me the lovely thing about Four Weddings coming along was that it was comedic and I had the only thing I felt I was remotely useful in in terms of acting was if there was some jokes around that's quite good at knowing where they are and trying to bring them out and I concurrent with that whole career I'd had up till then doing films and television I'd had a comedy show with to friends which was on my real source of pride and passion and and so when I went off to do these films which are rather serious you know I put on my serious face as best I could but really I thought I'd be more comfortable with few jokes around and so that was the good thing about for weddings when okay that's just that was I felt like I'm more doing something that I can do which other people can't do whereas if it's deep dark Strindberg you know ray Fiennes will do that better so to a certain extent it's not typecasting it's just doing what you're best at when we were shooting for weddings in a funeral or for that matter when you're working on any film is there a point where you think this could actually work where you have a good feeling about it and you don't think you're just being unreasonably optimistic well I certainly thought that when I read that script it was a bizarrely brilliant script I remember calling my agent and saying I think there's been a mistake you sent me a good script and and which happened one more time in my career when they sent me Jerry Maguire and they said yes sorry there was a mistake that was meant to go to Tom Cruise so but with Four Weddings yet what I thought the script was good and stood a good chance but we were all pessimists and when we cut the film together the rough cut looked at it me Mike Newell that producers we all thought Richard Curtis all thought it was an abomination and really wanted to emigrate and why don't you think that we just just didn't didn't like it was funny or clever or interesting and and then they took it to Santa Monica and had a screening and everyone went mad for it and said it just we were wrong and audiences were right and that was that was the beginning of what I think of his face phase two yeah yeah yeah that's right and then you were you're doing things like nine months for a Hollywood studio well I did oh yeah I suddenly had the you know the world at my feet bizarrely I'd have absolutely no one and I took forever to choose something to do and I remember driving my agents absolutely insane because I don't really want to do anything and then this project of Christopher Columbus's came along and and I did it and I very nearly ruined it I bet it did pretty much ruin it I mean he you know he's a genius really mrs. Doubtfire and home alone on those things he's a genius what he does and there's brilliant people in that film Julianne Moore and Tom Arnold and all those people with whom Jeff Goldblum and I just I don't know why I think I panicked you know having been paid 20,000 pounds or whatever it was to do four weddings a funeral if you suddenly paid millions you think well I better ramped up my performance by two hundred times but all that means is you over act critically which is what I did so I'm always very apologetic to those people right when you when you look back on that period do you think are there are there any parts of it that you would save in terms of you yes your bomb it the the midden the midden of the post for weddings and funerals yes no some good films well I did there was some that I signed up for before for weddings came out so an awfully big adventure is a good film yes so directed by Mike Newell and the Englishman he went up a hill is a charming film and well I liked I liked the thriller no one else went to see it but I think extreme measures I'm quite proud of no there's plenty in there and of course Notting Hill is you know people like that Notting Hill is fascinating especially if you watch it right after Four Weddings and a funeral because I've developed this sort of I guess I would say a grand unifying theory of Hugh Grant and one and one part of that is one part of that is that starting at some time in the mid 90s your films start to seem like a autobiographical in the sense that they're about there is much about fame and responsibilities as they are the story that they're telling yeah sorry sorry to lay that on you without warning but Notting Hill particularly because the Julia Roberts character in that movie is the person who has his besieged by the paparazzi can't have a moment's peace every move she makes is scrutinized and you're playing the average guy you're playing the ordinary guy which is why she's attracted to you but I wonder if you weren't feeling some of the same things that she was feeling it that her character was feeling at that point in your career well I suppose I had had some experience of that yeah but I don't want to put a pin in your theory but I did oh please do whatever wasn't the reason I did that for I did I did that from just because what for the same reason as any other film I've done is literally because it's the best script on the table at that moment and this one happened to be Notting Hill it happened to be with a brilliant premise I mean you know you can sometimes tell with the one-line pitch line and when it's you know nobody Bookseller falls in love with most famous woman in the world it's great I want to see that film instantly can I ask you a really geeky question about that movie yes oh good if you'd said no I don't know what it would be there's a section in that movie where after you can't be with Julie Roberts anymore where they chart the passage of one year and you're walking through a marketplace and you see the sea changing how did you how was that seen done well analog old-fashioned way the you know with props guys with brain machines and throwing snowflakes at you there was no digital in that I I don't think we had digital in 1998 or if it was it was in its infancy I remember a lot of polystyrene in my throat and eyeballs I wanted to talk to you about about a boy which is a film I gather you're fond of as well yes this is a movie that you correct me if I'm wrong but didn't you acquire the rights to that novel long before you were able actually to make it was that true I think I tried and then try DeNiro got hold of it before you did or something yes I think that's right De Niro had it a bit but previous to that Ian softly was going to make it and he didn't want me when it was went into turnaround with his version the lovely Weitz brothers came on board and it was like it was with with new line and yeah we set it up completely differently and then new line decided they didn't want it at the last moment so I went to my old cozy friends working title and that's how we made it now this is not a funny haha movie all of the time this movie and this is something I feel like this might be one of the kinds of films that you maybe as a leading actor always on look out for you have the character has more than one layer to them and there are some there are some challenges implicit that's not just you know you can be funny but there may be some things you don't know for sure that you can do and yeah yeah well it is it's a lovely place to be at least for me it's very comfortable place to be run as jokes as a dark and light notes in the same place I was saying to you backstage earlier apart from anything else if the joke doesn't work you can always pretend it was meant to be a serious scene yeah in in those geometries as there and yeah it takes a bit debris just take the pressure off the comedy it takes the pressure off the it takes the heaviness out of the serious bits so it's a it's a it's a nice tone and it also I think in a way reflects life you know it's life is funny and dark at the same time and it's rather odd the way that we have to leave you know tend to push dramatic representations into such a strict genres do you do you ever wish that you had been more of a sort of stereotypically dramatic actor where you're you know no no no no not really because I said I'm sound like terrible or cliche but I comedy is hard and it's hard because really it's binary it's either funny or it's not funny people either go har-har or they don't whereas with drama you're dealing in infinite shades of grey and it's that's actually quite relaxing it's true of course you can be more moving or less moving but there's something absolutely terrifying about will they laugh or will they not laugh and it can be down to such tiny tiny things tiny increments or performance tiny increments of camera position editing the music you put behind the scene I've known scenes which gets huge laughs in previews and then you experiment and you change that the music that's on the jukebox in the background on the bar and suddenly they don't laugh again and it's it's very delicate I'm fascinated by this because there is a sense that we think of the we think of the great films you think of the series films we think of the dramas and if you look at the types of films that win awards the last I believe the last movie to win best picture that was basically a comedy was Annie Hall what about that silent movie I was thinking about that is that would you count that as a comedy I can't remember really think so but yeah I know what you mean and I know what you mean and and why is that you know why is that why do we think seriousness darkness equals quality why is comedy nuts why is comedy not taken seriously I guess is the question yeah but I think people do it Marez and they like it it's just for some reason we have to applaud death and misery I I was on the American Academy panel to shortlist Best Foreign Language Film this year and just after Christmas and they put you in a basically a cinema for five days and show you 15 films from around the world and you're supposed to reduce the list of five or seven or delivers now and it about eight of them were about the Holocaust because because countries have worked out each country gives one film and they've worked out that is their best chance of getting a nomination this is actually true yeah there's something a little dispiriting about that good though they were many of them yes but comedies when when done well stick with people yeah I think I hope so and yeah I just keep making a point it is it's not easy those things are not easy light is quite difficult to achieve you know you've often been compared I don't want to embarrass you but here we are - Cary Grant yes yes were you were you were you a fan of his growing up did you draw anything from him no next question I mean when Four Weddings came out people kept asking that question mainly because I have the same name and to be I it was an embarrassing question because to be honest I'm not very sinned illiterate or at least I will certainly wasn't then and I didn't really know Cary Grant very well but since then I have watched his stuff and of course he's just a you know massive genius and now I find the question here deeply embarrassing yeah I withdraw it then okay what what movie stars did you admire growing up are there any that you still look to his inspiration well it didn't really work like that and I don't remember being aspired well yeah okay the ones I revered were not the kind of actors that I can ever emulate because we don't really work in precisely the same kind of genre so be you know De Niro and Pacino and it was Goodfellas and The Godfather and Once Upon a Time in America and we loved me and my British friends we loved all that kind of gangs and death and darkness but I you know I say I've never been offered one of those films and I've never really understood why well you got to do Mickey blue eyes yes I did I did maybe that's why we made it yeah you had actually one of the I wrote this down because I liked it so much a quote about you in that film from Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times he said he was reviewing Mickey blue eyes and he said if Hugh Grant had been on the Titanic fewer lives would have been lost if he'd accompanied Robert Scott to the South Pole the explorer would have lived to be 100 that's how good Hugh Grant is at rescuing doomed ventures well that's the definition of mr. feelings because III feel at this night he's being nice about me as an actor but I feel sad as a producer of that film and anyway that film has I personally feel it has has many flaws but it also has two or three scenes which are still make me laugh to this day it's I'm actually laughing just thinking about it because I think if you put like you know the word the phrase high concept is bandied about a lot but I feel like Hugh Grant in an American gangster film that's about as high content well that was that was the joke you know yes and it's and it never gets old for me yeah good but you have played these sorts of parts once in a while that I think are those more of those transformational parts like Cloud Atlas yeah which I can only imagine what that experience was like replaying characters across multiple time zone yeah heavy makeup in some cases yeah can you tell me a little bit about that well just that during this phase of really not doing very many films occasionally oddities come up that are just too fascinating to turn down and this one which housekeeper others now sisters in are came up with this project and wanted me to place six baddies in six different time zones and it was so fascinating actually was five and I went to meet him and I I said I'd do it if you give me a sixth one there was there was a role that I really liked and they gave it to me and I kind of enjoyed it I didn't realize what prosthetic makeup meant I didn't enjoy sitting in makeup for six hours every day having plastic applied to my face but I thought in five of the roles I was pretty good and in one of them I was shocking I thought was very bad as the cannibal in the post-apocalyptic world I actually like that oh good I thought it was a I imagine this is what you would have been like in a Mad Max film yeah maybe maybe but I'd sort of assumed I could do it and then I remember standing on a mountaintop with no hair and tattoos and I supposed to lick my lips ready to eat a human being and I thought I can't do this I need a witty line here one of them watch house keys kept saying come on man more like a panther yeah you're really hungry it's good it's good to motivate your actors I suppose yeah yes let me I wanted to throw out just a few general questions just to see what you might have to say about them what is your comfort food film what is the film that you watch when you cannot decide what else to watch Goodfellas I think there's any way that there are very few films I watch more than once and they're all tend to be - yeah to do with organized crime what member of your family probably most influenced you as an actor oh my mom the rest of them can't act at all uh-uh well my mum was a was a good mimic she did good funny voices and yeah so if I any ability I have comes from her for sure and got me into a lot of trouble at school because I was endlessly imitating teachers and things when you're when your kids are old enough to appreciate the fact that daddy is in a movie what movie do you show them first I can't get them interested in any of my stuff I chain them to chairs and try and show them they've got shocking taste they want to watch farm and Sam for Christ's sake well I don't think they they they don't I think they think that everyone's daddy's on the side of buses you know they don't if you could save one of your movies the negative of one of your movies from a fire low dipping well this is yeah I actually accept for Florence Fosters well it would be that or about a boy but then I yeah would be one of those too but it would I suppose we'd have to go with about a boy because that has a negative whereas I think we have time for just a couple of questions if you if you're out of that yeah anybody I hear we get to see you dance in this film and I'm just curious and I was curious after seeing me I'm the opposite of Meryl uh do you ever ad-lib when you do these dances the dances yes uh yeah yes very much so I pride myself on my choreography yeah I claim that in music and lyrics I invented that dance that became a sensation all over the Far East what was it called some know something man what was it what he was doing what what gangman I invented gangman style in music Ella yeah sorry to jump in on this mr. grant mr. Curtis tells me that during Love Actually when you do your improvise he'll dance yeah that was not a fun initially a fun experience can you tell us a little bit about that well only that he kept wanting me to rehearse it and I was too frightened to I kept making excuses and it was never a Hurston tone and we shot it and then yes that's not easy you know well it's not easy at 7:00 in the morning if you're a cross middle-aged Englishman suddenly start wiggling your ass in front of her stone-cold sober you know it was note so it's an appalling experience actually same movie um we used to watch when we were kids we had white Christmas every Christmas was the movie we all sat down as a family now we sit down and watch Love Actually do you think it's a well the audience obviously thinks it's a very worthy successor how do you feel that's very nice and I mean uh uh what horrifies me about Love Actually is how good Collins story is and I never liked anything good to happen to Colin and but the last time I watched that film III found his story profoundly moving I might have shed a tear my friend they were noticing that almost every English actor we Revere has been in one of the Harry Potter movies yet was that a conscious thing or it just happened well I was they did come to me about one part in one film and I can't honestly remember why I turned it down well actually I can and I can remember it I can't remember the part then I can't we'll go for a drink I tell you we are actually featuring after New York are doing a rooftop screening of two weeks notice and I would ask there's an amazing chemistry between you and Sandra Bullock it looked like it was a lot of fun was it actually fun or was that the best acting you've ever done it's unquestionably marvelous acting but no oddly enough you're right I adored Bullock we had a lovely time and yes I miss her really I remember getting back from the world tour of publicizing that film and walking around my kitchen thinking I'm sad I miss I miss sandy she's you know I don't if you ever had a hip but she's a she's a laughs she's not British what oh no she's a filthy German yeah has more reason to have her happy I saw Florence last week and what I really loved is your expression while she's singing how hard was that - did you ever crack up and what was your first impression on hearing her voice well you're right it is it is irresistible funny watch what mouth does and she had a kind of silly ometer for her her bad singing and sometimes she'd set it at one and sometimes very often actually when she wasn't on camera I think almost deliberately to make us all laugh were the ones who were on camera she'd turn it up to 11 or 12 and I did struggle it was a scene in that film where I have to be very fierce to the people who are laughing at her at a concert and kind of give them hard stares and tell them off but in fact I am absolutely killing myself laughing and son it was a real struggle what do you thank the great Hugh Grant and Matt Zoller Seitz and I'm going to lead you offstage who can't Matt's on site thank you very much you're very nice thank you at the same time if you're doing stuff that's a little bit more technical a little bit more visually flaring like Sherlock is and obviously Star Trek and and very much smog in mocap you kind of have to go the distance of understanding it in order not to hurt yourself primarily and also just to make it work make the shot work make the moment work we were in a world where broadchurch had been had already been a sort of international thing and with GracePoint we set out very consciously to tell the same story because that you know someone did the math or the math sorry

Channel: BAFTA Guru

Views: 109,625

Keywords: BAFTA, BAFTA Guru, British Academy Of Film And Television Arts (Award Presenting Organization), creative, career, film making, TV, gaming, actor, advice

Id: q7Z0MNq4T9Q

Length: 36min 57sec (2217 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 06 2016