If anyone's the king of romantic dramas and comedies, it's Hugh Grant. When we first saw him running like a mad man, beautiful hair swept back by the wind, glasses askew, to a wedding in Four Weddings and a Funeral, we fell in love with his characteristically boyish, clumsy, fumbling persona he seemed to portray. Traits we came to know well in other movies like Notting Hill and Love Actually where he tries to win the girl.
But whether he's playing a confident or not so confident character, they are always chasing the leading lady. In Bridget Jones, he's an ass, but he gets Bridget eventually. In About A Boy, even if he's lying to the girl he likes he still gets her in the end. After the '90s and the early 2000s, Grant stopped playing these types of roles, however. Maybe because he puts his foot in his mouth every time he works with his leading ladies.
Grant knows he has a problem, sort of. The ex-heart throb revealed to Graham Norton that he's said some questionable things to his female costars in the past. "Now when you talk about your costars you're quite open. You gave an interview to Elle Magazine, and they asked you about your various leading ladies, do you remember some things you said about them?" Graham Norton asked the actor.
"I think it was regrettable," Grant responded. Norton went on to go through the list of things Grant said about the women, to Grant's delight. He started with Grant's costar from Sense and Sensibility, Emma Thompson. "Clever, funny, mad as a chair," was how Grant explained her. "That's true, you know Emma," Grant told Norton.
He described his Bridget Jones co-star Renee Zellweger as, "delightful, also far from sane," to which Grant replied, "Fair...she is genuinely lovely but her emails are 48 pages long. I can't understand a word of them — but I'll put them on Twitter."
In another interview with People, Grant said, "Renee loves me and I love Renee. Well, I mean she’s in the same category as Emma Thompson, in terms of lunacy, but an amazing actress of course, and very generous. She once sent me a fabulous huge volume of beautiful photography, including a lot of semi-undressed women. I remember it because I had just landed in Marrakesh … and the book was impounded."
On Sandra Bullock, he said, "Genius, German, but too many dogs," for Julianne Moore, "Brilliant actress, loathes me," Rachel Weisz, "Clever, beautiful, despises me," and Drew Barrymore, "Made her cry, hates me." Norton said this can't all be true, so Grant counted through them all.
"Julianne definitely hates me, Rachel Weisz, I think we got on fine but I don't know why I said that. Maybe I was going for a comedy triple I don't know...[on Drew Barrymore] she made the mistake of giving me notes, which, how would you take that?"
Grant also talked to People about working with Barrymore on Music & Lyrics. "Well, Drew, I think did hate me a bit. But I admired her. We just were very different human beings," Grant explained. "She was very LA and I was a grumpy Londoner. The funny thing is, although it was fractionally tense on the set of that film, I think the chemistry is rather good between us. Sometimes tension makes a good crackle."
In 2016, Grant told Andy Cohen that he thought none of his co-stars liked him very much and said, "They all hate me, I think."
On the other hand, Andy MacDowell didn't have a bad thing to say about working with Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral. A fan asked her the question on Cohen's Watch What Happens Live, and she said, "I really can't think of a bad part about working with Hugh, he was adorable." Cohen said Grant maintains he's "crankiest person on the planet," and MacDowell replied, "He was when I was working with him. He wasn't really famous at all. I mean he was torturing me because I was well known, and little did he know, hahaha, that he was about to hit the big-o big time."
Grant described MacDowell to Elle as a "southern belle. Charming. Gorgeous." Daily Mail reported that Grant revealed he even "got off" with his Notting Hill costar Julia Roberts and said, "It’s a big mouth. I was aware of a faint echo when I was kissing her." Zellweger on the other hand is a "top snogger" in his opinion, as he and Colin Firth tried to be better kissers in Bridget Jones. "I can’t think of a leading lady that I have not fancied," Grant continued. "You have got to fancy them as otherwise it is no fun. What is the point of doing a film?"
Whether Grant actually fancied his costars or not, he truly has a knack for giving them compliments while putting them down at the same time, or simply stating outright that they hate him. In recent years though Grant is older, and has turned towards playing more serious roles. Still, it would be interesting to know what exactly it is Weisz and Barrymore hate about such a cranky yet funny guy.
