The Devil in Hugh Grant

 

By Holly Millea, Talk - May 2001


It's been one year since the breakup with Elizabeth Hurley, and it's a leaner, funnier, more complex Hugh Grant - single, full of mischief, and playing an irresistible cad in Bridget Jones's Diary.


Let's set aside the first three hours of conversation over dinner at a Manhattan sushi restaurant and begin with his simple admission, "I’m too drunk to do this interview now." Because that was when Hugh Grant became interesting. Because that was the most sincere of all the many things he had to say. And he had to say it. Because with each round of sake and Sapporo beer (he did not drink alone) it became increasingly and apparently more difficult for the actor to call on his immense and famous charm - a charm that serves and protects him and leaves everyone else, as they say, "charmed, I’m sure." So that well before the waitress brought the $589 check, Grant's eye-fluttering, self-deprecating, quipster alter ego had called it a night. And left him sitting there.

 

To be with the former is to be thrown into a screwball comedy in which Grant has all the best lines. To be with the latter is to be with a man who when asked about moving on after the breakup of his long-term relationship with actress Elizabeth Hur­ley narrows his eyes and replies, "How easy do you think it is to find someone you can share 14 years of in-jokes with? Not easy. And I don't know that I will." There's nothing funny or clever or charming about that. It's just an answer. A slightly annoyed - a bit angry, a lot poignant - honest-to-God answer. And the longer Grant goes without tossing off a remark worthy of a Preston Sturges film, the more attractive he becomes. Because he really does have something to say, even on the subject of charm itself: "It's slippery. And it's a pain once you've started, because then people expect it and you have to keep going. You can't stop. I’d like to be vulnerable and open or silent and moody. I’ve tried. But I don't know what face to make." [Small charm relapse]

 

Before he was a star Hugh Grant graduated from Oxford with a degree in literature and worked as a fine actor in some fine films, including Maurice, Im­promptu, The Remains of the Day, and Sirens. But his Cary Grantish turn in Four Weddings and a Fu­neral brought him international fame. His character in the film was so becoming to him - such a lovely, easy fit - that it was hard for him not to wear it when he went out in public. People want him to be that awkward, funny, romantic man. (Much in the same way that they want Julia Roberts to be that tough, vulnerable, grinning Pretty Woman.) "Stars have parameters and people won't cut them any slack," says Michael Apted, who directed Grant in the medical thriller Extreme Measures. "But you have to make these transitions if you want a full-bodied career. Hugh wants that. He was very hard on himself making the film. He was like, 'Oh God, there I go touching my hair, twirling my curls.' He tried to remove his comic persona."

 

"There's a huge complexity and sadness underneath his sense of humor," says British director Sharon Maguire, whose freshman film, Bridget Jones's Diary, costars Grant as an irresistible but absolute cad. "That's what made him interesting for this part. The character is scared of being lonely and hides behind funny anecdotes and stories, because what else can you do? There's a certain desperation, and Hugh encapsulates that."

 

Grant doesn't look inebriated - not even tipsy. He looks sharp and devilishly mod, his hair long and perfectly shaggy, his recently leaner physique dressed in a slim black velvet corduroy suit, the milky smooth skin of his chest exposed beneath an ultrawhite unbuttoned button-down shirt. The package is much cooler than the one I interviewed seven years ago at London's Soho club. Grant was tweedy then. More professorial, but still dreamy. It was drizzling outside and he was late and damp and filled with a galloping, effortless charm. He had just won the Golden Globe for Four Weddings and a Fu­neral, had wrapped his first major studio film, Nine Months, and was starting Simian Films with Hurley, who herself had just signed an Estée Lauder modelling contract. Weighing his new fame and fortunes over lunch, Grant paused, looked out the window, and said, "It's like this huge balloon that just... If I was anyone apart from myself, I’d have my pin absolutely ready."

 

One month, one hooker, and one mug shot later, and it was a self-fulfilled prophecy. "Ah, very good," Grant says now, nodding in agreement. "There you have it." Watching him on the Hugh Grant Apology Tour, taking his licks on Leno and Letterman, was riveting and uncomfortable, like watching Survivor. Would Grant get kicked off the island? "The day after I was arraigned, Joe Roth from Disney rang and said, 'Please, please, please, I beg you on bended knees to do 101 Dalmatians.' And you can't get more family-oriented than that," Grant says. "I got way more offers after [the arrest] than I did before, really and truly. But I couldn't bear to do crap all those years. I’ve never turned down anything that's gone on to be a success except the villain in Titanic, and I’m still delighted I didn't do that. I have done a few things that turned out to be failures."

 

It took five years and Notting Hill for Grant to regain his leading man status. It didn't hurt having Julia Roberts for a costar. (Ten years ago the two read together for a little project called Shakespeare in Love.) But Grant's real rabbit's foot was Notting Hill screenwriter Richard Curtis, the wit behind Four Weddings and a Funeral. "The older I get the more I realize that the only acting I ever should have done in my life is things written by him," Grant says. "Frankly, I don't like anything else. That's why I never work." And that's why Grant is in Bridget Jones's Diary, a film based on Helen Fielding's best-selling novel about a plump thirty something woman whose love life is literally the stuff of Pride and Prejudice. Fielding got her wish to have Colin Firth play the proud, upstanding Mr. Darcy (he'd played the role to perfection in the PBS miniseries of the Jane Austen classic). Maguire then set about getting her wish: to have Grant play Darcy's womanizing rival, Daniel Cleaver, the head of the publishing house where Bridget works. "Hugh calls me 'Stalking Maguire,' " she says. "For two and a half years he'd take my calls but always say no. Then when Richard came on board to rewrite the script, that closed the deal." Maguire laughs. "I went to see Hugh after this series of seductive phone calls, and he said rather disingenuously 'I can't think of what this character's like.' And I said, 'Hugh, it's you. You know it's you!'"

 

Of course he does. "It's always made Richard howl with laughter that he writes a character and everybody assumes I’m him. But until now it's really been Richard I’m playing," Grant says, owning up. "This time he's tried to write me." Curtis delights in dispelling the romantic notions of Grant the two have created. "At last Hugh can be portrayed with some measure of honesty," he says. "In fact he himself came up with some of the funniest things in the film. When he first seduces Renée [Zellweger, who plays the title char­acter in Bridget Jones] and sees she's wearing a girdle and says, 'Oh, Mommy!' and 'Don't worry, I’m wearing something similar myself' - it's all Hugh. He's so funny when he's being bad." Which is more often than not. Maguire cites his "blistering sense of humor - cutting. Never stops. Full of mischief. One day he decided to draw on people's arms." Draw what? "Penises, actually." (Oh, that old trick. "I did it to Fergie at Elton John's ball," Grant says, still amused. "Of all the people I’ve done it to, she hated it the most. She was wearing this lovely sleeveless dress....")

 

But surely Curtis can testify to Grant's having a sensitive bone in his body. In his little toe, perhaps? After giving it some thought, the writer is struck by a memory of Grant on the day they shot the funeral scene in Four Weddings: "A lovely, sad poem by W.H. Auden was read. Afterward Kristin Scott Thomas went off to a corner and was crying. Hugh came up to me and said he wasn't quite sure I’d gotten the right poem. And I said, 'Oh, really? Which one did you have in mind?' And he said, 'There's quite a good one actually: "There was a young lady named Heather..."' That's all I can tell you. It was the most obscene, the most shock­ing limerick. And I realized Hugh hadn't gotten a bit sad during that scene." (Ask Maguire if she's heard Grant's Heather limer­ick and she replies nonchalantly, "Is that the one that has 'cunt lips' in it? He wanted to put that one in the boat scene. Colin Firth came up with the one we did use. It's about a girl from Ealing.")

 

You'll get no such naughty talk from Zellweger. She merely recalls how sweet it was when Grant's father visited him in his trailer before they went off for a round of golf. This bit of information is actually telling, given that when you ask Grant about playing golf he says, "Please don't write that. It's my secret shame that I’ve turned into one of those boring bastards." But ask him about Heather and he'll repeat the limerick until you've got it memorized. And then explain it to you.

 

Zellweger's casting caused a big brouhaha, what with her being skinny and from Texas. But Vivien Leigh was from England and she played Scarlett O'Hara, so the Brits owed us one. In no time at all, Zellweger chunked up 20 pounds, developed a severe case of English accent, and bravely set sail, despite the protests of the British press, who were screaming for Kate Winslet or Helena Bonham Carter or that other English actress - Gwyneth Paltrow.

 

Grant recalls the night when he first met his costar, just over a year ago at the Golden Globes: "She was stark, raving bonkers, but charming. I didn't understand a word she was saying. Universal had several films up that year, and they decided to split Notting Hill up amongst their other tables. So, sadly, Elizabeth and I were sitting at the Man on the Moon table. I ended up sitting next to, um - what's the name of that rock star woman? Ripped dress... Courtney Love! I had Courtney Love's left bosom out of her dress on my plate in front of me. It was extraordinary. I didn't know where to look. And Danny DeVito, who produced that film - this tiny figure with his legs dangling - on the chair to my left. And everyone else cheering around the table when they announced the nominations for best actor in a comedy, bellowing for Jim Carrey. And then sad me, sort of sitting there, like a loser. And then Jim went up.... So I met Renée there, and she was charming."

 

Everything came somewhat full circle when at this year's Golden Globes Grant presented the best actress in a comedy category and opened the envelope to announce Zellweger as the winner, for her performance in Nurse Betty. Zellweger was MIA in the bathroom. Grant stalled onstage, his head spinning with clever things to say. "The joke that flashed through my mind was, 'Renée, where's Renée? All right then - Sandra Bullock!' But that would have been terrible. Sandra Bullock would have hated me."

 

Grant wants to know: "Whose ears are bigger, mine or yours?" He slips into silliness like a schoolboy, which, for him, is slipping into something more comfortable. He loves talking about teeth and nose hair and snakes and snails and things that have tails.... He wants a good look at your tongue. When the chef places an order of uni in front of him, he accurately describes the wet, brown delicacy as looking like something "you dreaded putting your hand in when you fell over in Chiswick Park play­ing football." He sniffs the little pile of sea urchin and says, "I’m prepared to offer you money to eat this." The chef raises his hand to his mouth in a gesture urging Grant to eat the uni. Grant takes a bite, swallows hard, and smiles at the chef. "Thank you very much," he says, raising his eyebrows, before admitting under his breath, "Christ, that's horrible. Absolutely revolting." The chef keeps nodding, grinning. "Pondy, like swallowing a goldfish," Grant says. He takes a sip of sake.

 

Pulling out a cell phone, I suggest we call a friend of mine he met briefly at a party. Grant, up for more fun, dials her number. "It's her answering machine," he says, holding the phone out: "...please leave a message after the tone..."

 

"Roxana, this is Hugh. Wanted to say hi. I’m pretty sure I fancied you." He glances over, eyes twinkling. "But I can't quite remember..." (According to Richard Curtis, "When he's trying to be serious his voice goes up an octave and when he's trying to be sexy his voice goes down an octave - that's the way he acts.") Right now his voice is somewhere in between. "If you're a girl with dark hair and green eyes, then I’m pretty sure I did. I’m having a lovely dinner here with Holly. Call me some time because I want to talk about your future. I spoke to your parents about it the other day and we're all worried. Okay, bye."

 

Grant has been up for grabs since his relationship with Hurley ended a year ago last May. "It was as near-perfect a mutual dumping as you can get," Grant says. "It was absolutely 50-50. Not even 49-51." But even way back when, the two couldn't completely commit. There were several years when they lived on separate continents. "The real truth," Grant told me once, while they were still together, "is that our best times are travelling. Foreign hotels and airplanes, we get along like a house on fire. It's just back home where the trouble starts. Traditionally with my girlfriends I’ve held the upper hoof. But I think she definitely has the hoof over me."

 

The actors shared similar upbringings. Both have upper-class accents that belie their middle-class backgrounds. Grant's father James is an artist and retired businessman who ran the London end of a large carpet company that was hard hit by a recession in the 1970s. His mother Fynvola taught French in a largely Asian primary school. "They were relatively posh," Grant says, "but had no money." Both Grant and Hurley spent childhood summers in Cornwall and loved Enid Blyton books (the British equivalents to Nancy Drew), in particular The Naughtiest Girl in the School. Their coupling began when they costarred in Rowing with the Wind. Grant played the Romantic poet Lord Byron to Hurley's Claire Claremont. "It's quite shocking that eight years have gone by, but it's never seemed like a long time," Hurley told me in 1995. "We've never considered ourselves grown-up enough to think about getting married. Never at any time in our relationship have we even thought about the future."

 

They remain friends and partners in Simian Films, talking business on the phone, Grant says, "two, three times a day." To date, they've produced two films together, Extreme Measures and Mickey Blue Eyes. "They're acerbic, bright people," Apted says. "They have different strengths. She's more worldly, more rooted in the practicalities of life. He's more artistic. She was very nurturing with him. He's a nervous man and difficult to direct when he's taken big steps beyond his comic roles. We felt the need to make him feel secure. They realized they were a strong unit, more potent together than apart. It's good that they can use each other professionally."

 

"Some days they were literally one person," recalls Jeanne Tripplehorn, Grant's Mickey Blue Eyes costar. "They were like siblings. It was clear that decisions would come down from both of them, but she was the one laying down the law. It was like good cop/bad cop. She's one of those people who are naturally able to flex their muscles." Tripplehorn chuckles. "Hugh's wickedly funny with his animal metaphors. We were at dinner one night and he looked over and said, 'Oh Jeanne (he called me "Threehorns"), you have the most amazing hands. Lovely. Do you get your nails done?' And then he turned to Elizabeth and said, 'Liz, let me see your claws.'"

 

Having learned a thing or two at the hands of Hurley, Grant jokes about the way he plays good cop/bad cop when it comes to giving women what he thinks they want. "There's no girl who only wants bastards and no girl who only wants a nice guy," he contends. "Women want both. And really they'd like to alternate on a weekly basis. Can any man be both? I like to keep women guessing. It's the old interrogation technique: One cop comes in and gives you a cigarette and the next comes in and beats the shit out of you."

 

On set Grant's split personality is also in evidence. "He's a dreadful giggler in the midst of takes. I had to hide from him and shout direction from around the corner," Maguire says. "At the same time, he's very serious and coiled like a spring. We had a standing joke about his 2:30 tantrum. I lost it several times myself. We called them our 'tanties.' I’d say, 'Come to Mommy and tell her what's wrong today. We're not at home to Mr. Angry. We're not at home to Mr. Tantrum.' Hugh would say things like, 'Oh, Mr. Tummy is acting up again. Mr. Tummy is ill.' Or I’ve got Wendy Wind,' which was obviously flatulence. But even in a bad thunder Hugh will win you over. He knows everybody will love him because they'll be laughing."

 

His mood swings could be a Seinfeld episode: "I get three kinds of rage: coffee rage, cheese rage, and sex rage," Grant begins. "One comes after Nescafé, the world's most delicious coffee by far and away. All this wank fucking Starbucks bollocks. Nescafé is so much more delicious. I send back real coffee and ask for the instant. But I get foul, really foul, an hour later. Same with cheese. I get foul because I know I’m not going to go to the lavatory properly for the next two weeks. It's just the most hideous thing. But delicious! Sex - the same thing. Heaven! But now, as soon as it's finished I want to kill." Why? "I don't know why," he says with a shrug and a sigh. "Someone has to explain it to me."

 

You can't blame his parents. Married for more than 40 years, they provided Hugh and his older brother Jamie, now a banker, with "quite a secure childhood," his mother says. "He was very good in school - except for primary school. He was the sort sent out of hymn practice for making the others laugh by making faces. He was slightly naughty at that stage. But not for very long." She pauses reflectively and then adds, "I hope he gets a chance to write, because that's his other great gift, really."

 

Maguire found that out firsthand when she had the actors write a diary in their character's voice, to be read aloud at the first rehearsal. "Renée's was as neurotic as Bridget's, all about gaining weight," she says. "Colin's was all about his work and had no problem with commitment. Hugh's character had come from divorced parents. It was basically an account of someone who had so much existential despair that the only way to overcome it was to live life dangerously. He's a predatory character with an innate sense of humor, which he uses as a weapon. It was a really fascinating insight. I knew that we'd chosen exactly the right people for the parts. Hugh will never be the 'right' one. He'll always be dangerous."

 

To: Hmillea@talkmagazine.com

Fr: Hgrant

 

Holly

Daniel's diary. Wd be v nice if you'd e me back the bits you want to use if any.

All love

H

 

PS Sorry not to give you any juice on love life. Sticks in my gorge. But just in case you were influenced by recent clippings (doubtful), am not - for the record - seeing Portia de Rossi. For Christ's sake.  

 

Friday December 3rd

 

Woke from dream in which was having sex with enormous and terrifying Greek woman to find had in fact been having sex with enor­mous and terrifying Greek woman.

 

Bleak A.M. in office. Lara on phone from NY just before lunch - v bossy and serious. Curious how fancy her so much more now officially just business colleagues. Got sense she's still bitter which cheered me up. Perpetua’s alcoholic slave-girl, [Bridget] Jones, looking dirty and reader's wivesy leaning over fax machine.

 

Home, full of unwelcome self-loathing and feeling naffly beached and lost which - face it - may be. Thought re ringing sexy, clever gets-the-point-of-me dirty Lara, then remembered was only three weeks ago she was trying to murder me with a Jimmy Choo.

 

Saturday December 4th

 

Worst thing being back in England is grey banality of weekends. Miss loafing by pools in Hamptons feeling superior and being fancied by bankers' wives.

 

On way to shop saw Jones girl from office staggering home clearly still pissed from night before wolfing Pot Noodles straight from the tub. Girl after my own heart in many ways.

 

Grant is on the phone calling from London, and he's in a foul mood having nothing to do with Nescafé or cheese or sex and everything to do with his hair. "I went and tried to have a trendy haircut and now I look like a lesbian on the female tennis circuit," he says, sounding too devastated and embarrassed to go to school. "It's all short and spiky and I look like Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle in the Beatrix Potter books." The actor is getting ready to shoot his next project, About a Boy, based on the Nick Hornby novel, which isn't so much about a boy as it is about an emotionally immature man who pretends to have a son and picks up women at single parent meetings. The man is the boy. But by the end of the book he's a man, thanks to a boy who pretends to be his son. It's another character Grant can relate to. "Ultimately I want to have kids. I think it would put a little bit of salt on the ice," he says, referring to his slippery, non­stick nature. "But in the back of my mind I never wanted to have kids until I’d done something I’m proud of - written a book, had my name on something really worthwhile. I’ve only ever trotted out a few lines really. I’m so determined not to be in front of the cam­era anymore."

 

Years ago Michael Hoffman, who attended Oxford with Grant and directed him in Restoration, clued me in to Grant's inner workings: "Hughie's anxiety is that somehow he isn't very substantial. That people will somehow discover a lack of substance. He's not really weighty. He's not an existential hero. He's not someone Camus would have written a novel about. He's someone Oscar Wilde might have written a play about, or Evelyn Waugh."

 

So Grant is working on a screenplay (the same one he was writing when we first met, though he says it's only a year overdue). Not one to easily give anything away, Grant will only reveal, "It's a three-way, a large part of which takes piace in France." The plot will surely be as complicated and comedic as he is. "It's turning out surprisingly romantic," he says. Pause. "Either that or surprisingly bad."

 

Grant's vacillation brings us back to his dueling personality. When he's in London the confirmed bachelor spends his average evening in one of two ways. "There's spinster mode and fat old swinger mode," Grant says. "It varies week to week. Spinster goes home at eight, makes pasta, and watches Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Swinger squeezes himself into a Richard James suit - I have 22 of them, all nicked from the Bridget Jones film - leers at people, flirts, gets fat, and goes home." And not always home alone. "Being famous doesn't get in the way of dating," Grant admits. "It makes it alarmingly easy - I have all the trump cards now. In a way it's boring. I quite like the chase. Now it's easy to get female acquaintances. Though there are still plenty of girls who find me repellent." So is there any possibility of a third act with Hurley? "People keep saying that, yeah. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. But I do think you know when it's time for a break."

 

"He can't quite believe he's single again," says Maguire. "I’m sure he's terrified of it, of falling in love." The kind of guy women want to fix, to save, to write about in their diaries. "Hugh is neurotic-erotic," Tripplehorn pronounces. "A shrink would have a field day with him." But Grant will have none of it. "I don't think I need therapy, thank you," he says, quite seriously. "I’m frightened of those people. And more than that, I don't want to know what lies beneath."