Hugh Grant Rewatches Love Actually, Notting Hill, Heretic & More

Fine, of course, I-

Of course.

Whenever this, you know,

I'm flicking the channels at home after a few drinks

and this comes up, I just think,

Why doesn't my character have any balls?

Hello, I'm Hugh Grant, and I regret to say

we're now gonna go through some scenes from my career.

All right, here they are.

[upbeat pop music]

[film rattling]

[tape rewinding]

Does Nutley live here?

No.

Right, fine, thank you, sorry to disturb.

[woman exclaiming]

Aren't you the Prime Minister?

Yes, in fact, I am.

Merry Christmas.

Richard only wrote Four Weddings and a,

and a, and a Funeral and Notting Hill,

other people directed 'em,

and then like a lot of writers I've come across,

although he admired the directors he'd worked with,

he was dying to do it himself,

and we all dreaded it and thought he won't be able to do it,

but actually, I watched this the other day

and I think he's a brilliant director.

Much more cinematic, great visuals, hats off to him.

Again, you watch these things

and a lot of it's utterly preposterous.

So of course, the Prime Minister

would have some civil servant

who could find out exactly where she lived on this street,

as many people have pointed out, but it doesn't matter.

It's you, you, you know, you ride the, the wave of,

of sort of charm of the whole thing.

Ah, hello.

Does Natalie live here?

No, she doesn't.

Oh dear, okay.

[Girl] Are you singing carols?

No, no, I'm not.

I think it was all in one night.

I think we had to move along because

they, they open in different ways.

They're semi-detached houses or something like that.

I, I'm sure we moved along.

I look awfully tired.

I think I'd just shot,

I'd just come in from shooting Two Weeks Notice in New York

and I, I seem to remember being exhausted here.

Oh, hello.

Hello.

Um, this is my mom and my dad,

and my Uncle Tony and my Auntie Glen.

How very nice to meet you.

And um, this is the Prime Minister.

[Auntie] Yes, we can see that, darling.

My wife pointed this out the other day.

She loves it, and she says it's about pain, pain of love,

and actually all these stories are based on pain.

Even the little boy is in pain and I'm in pain,

and, and Laura Linney is in pain

because her, her, her brother is, you know,

in a very difficult situation in hospital,

and it's all about pain,

and then the best kind of British humor dealing with pain,

and I think when, when humor in a film is solving something

or, or a means of coping, I think it's trebly enjoyable.

[upbeat pop music]

[film rattling]

Can I just say no to your kind request

and leave it at that?

Yes.

Fine, of course, I-

Of course.

Probably all the time with Julia,

as with any brilliant actress, you're just thinking,

Oh Christ, they're really good.

I'm not gonna be as good as her.

And she's great at emoting

and she's got that kind of quality where it looks like her,

her skin is, is, is wafer thin.

You can sort of see her soul.

Whenever this, you know,

I'm flicking the channels at home after a few drinks

and this comes up, I just think,

Why doesn't my character have any balls?

There's a scene in this film where she's in my house

and the paps come to the front door and ring the bell

and I think I just let her go past me and open the door,

and that's awful,

and I've never had a girlfriend,

or indeed now wife who hasn't said,

Why the hell didn't you stop her, what's wrong with you?

And I don't really have an answer to that.

I, it was how it was written, and,

and I think he's despicable, really.

[upbeat pop music]

[film rattling]

I should have done this years ago.

Done what?

This.

Ooh, fuck.

Fuck me, that hurt.

Oh!

Oh, the fuck you think you're doing?

This.

[girls gasping]

Aw Christ, not again.

[Hugh grunting]

The big fight was to stop stunt men getting involved,

'cause they always want to come in and say, you know,

and, and choreograph the whole thing

and say, Mate, it'd be great if you know you

swing a right hook, and his head will go back.

And, and, and I just thought, yeah,

in action films, cowboy films, whatever, that's great,

but this is two middle class Englishmen

and they don't fight like that.

I've seen, I've seen them fight and it's, it's shit.

So we managed to ban the stunt man.

I think the last thing he contributed

was probably the dust bin lid, and after that,

it's just me and Colin messing about.

Colin's very weak.

He's virtually a piece of shellfish,

so that wasn't really a problem.

We were kind to each other.

On the next film, we had another of these fights

and we'd got older and we both put our backs out

and a chiropractor had to be summoned to the set.

[Hugh chuckling]

[glass crashing]

I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry.

Oh!

[glass clanking]

Oh God, I'm sorry.

He doesn't grow at all as I recall between this,

this one and the next one, but the one we've just made,

he's considerably older, 24 years older or something,

and I did worry that, you know, the same,

Hello, nice, little skirt, Jones.

Its great, but it, it, borderline tragic

for a man in his early 60's,

so we invented a whole sort of interim story

in which he's, did get together with some woman,

and he did have a kid,

and then they're estranged, of course,

'cause he's shags her sister

and he hasn't seen his son for 10 years,

and it just made him a bit more,

I think if he'd just been walking up and down

the King's road, chatting up girls for 24 years,

it would've been hard to endure him.

[upbeat pop music]

[film rattling]

♪ Rain, rain, don't go away ♪

♪ Fill up the sky ♪

[Hugh chuckling]

♪ We'll stay cozy and dry ♪

Well, I do love this film.

I just got a very unsettling letter with the script

from Paul King saying,

Look, we're making Paddington II,

and this time, the bad guy is a washed up old actor

who's incredibly vain and no one really likes him.

We thought of you.

[Hugh chuckling]

And I got over that hump.

♪ Listen to the kiss, kiss of the lovely rain ♪

[Hugh] I went to a converted Victorian bathhouse,

full in Broadway, and two charming choreographers

worked and worked and worked at me,

and I used to say to them, Any better today?

And they were very frank.

They'd say, No, maybe worse.

It got good enough by the end, and really, I'm kept alive

by all these other fantastic proper dancers,

and we had a fantastic choreographer, slightly camp chap,

you'd never guess from the choreographer,

but he's a bit camp.

Well, it seems I didn't need the West End after all,

just

a captive audience.

What am I like?

Guards, lock me up!

Even though it's a kid's film and a sequel,

and perhaps,

you would expect it doesn't need too much thought,

I always now put in vast amounts of thought and anxiety,

and I had a hu, a whole vast backstory for Phoenix.

I can tell you why he's called Phoenix.

It's 'cause he was,

he was conceived in the Phoenix Theater on St. Martin's Lane

by his mother, who was in love with a famous actor

who was married and was shagging her on the side,

and then she produced Phoenix.

You know, he was, he grew up as a sort of mummy's boy

and she shoved him into theater school and,

and over-mothered him.

I think that's why he's rather lonely

and has never had a good relationship,

and it's a complicated character

and very, very self-entitled and vain.

So even though it's all madness and silliness,

I did try to make him 3D.

No actor, I, I don't think including myself

really ever wants to play the charming lead.

They're very difficult, 'cause it, if you're not careful,

they, they go wet, or sort of just slightly unappealing.

When people perform Romeo and Juliet,

no one wants to play Romeo.

They, they want to play Mercutio or Tybalt,

more complex, or, or dangerous characters,

and it's, it's always been the same,

and, and audiences, for some reason,

are always drawn to the baddie,

which is a fascinating thing.

Why are they?

And it must mean

that we are fundamentally evil as human beings.

The antagonist, the bad guy

represents the real truth of the human experience.

[upbeat pop music]

[film rattling]

Except I did not have a relationship with Norman Scott.

Jeremy, I kept you off the witness stand

to save your life.

The prosecution had evidence.

They had men from the pubs, men from the streets,

men who know you.

Are all of them liars?

He was of an era when men couldn't,

or Englishmen of that class and that background

couldn't possibly admit that they were gay.

Even in the scene, he's sticking to that.

He, he's saying, you know, all those men were,

those witnesses were liars,

and, and he, he frames this whole explanation of, you know,

one can only speculate that this might be the case

and he still can't quite let go,

and I remember thinking that very final look

to my, my barrister here, Norman Scott.

I mean, one might say Norman Scott was the best.

I remember thinking this should be

maybe one of the very few glimpses

of the real quivering, jelly

at, at the, in the soul of Jeremy Thorpe.

How much he's suffered from having been so repressed.

Although I couldn't admit this either,

or Jeremy couldn't admit this.

I, I did love Nor, I, I loved Norman.

It was a love affair.

It was a thwarted love affair,

and so I tried to be a bit vulnerable

in this particular closeup.

Given those men,

maybe,

I suppose one could imagine,

but Norman Scott was the best.

It's quite tragic for the poor old boy.

You know, he gets off on this charge of trying to murder

Norman Scott, his ex lover,

but as his mother whispers in his ear,

You are, you know you're ruined

because this scandal won't go away.

And he never, after that moment,

could go back into politics,

and he'd had this glittering career up till then,

and so it's sort of the end for him.

The whole edifice is collapsing around him.

He's there on YouTube, you know,

from interviews or whatever.

He was doing TV shows in the 50's, 60's,

and I realized I could do a pretty good imitation of him.

I'm quite good at imitations,

and then I was scared 'cause I thought, well,

this has to be a lot more than just an imitation.

Sort of took a huge Jeremy Thorpe bath,

and I knew everything about him.

I, I read every book about him.

I met lots of people who had known him

as friends and as colleagues.

I became slightly sort of obsessed with him,

but there were certain odd keys,

as there often are when you are trying to find a character.

Jeremy Thorpe wore a particular kind of hat

and I was in a costume fitting and it didn't look right,

didn't look right, and none of the hats were right,

even though they looked as similar

to this famous hat he wore,

and then I just put it at a rakish angle

slightly on the back of her head,

and there was Jeremy Thorpe,

and that was more than just important in terms of hats.

It was important, oh I see, yes, rakish,

a bit of a chancer, bit of a gambler, he certainly was.

He lived a very, very risky life.

Getting dressed every morning for this character in these,

he had very specific three-piece suits

with a waistcoat and a, and an absurd watch chain

that no one had worn for, for decades,

and this became quite a ritual every morning

of getting dressed like that

and putting on a,

he wore a special ring and the chain and everything,

and, and, and then there he was,

but it's also a lot of makeup,

that I worked with a genius makeup team

who, who created a look with,

if you know this real character, is pretty damn good.

[upbeat pop music]

[film rattling]

What was that song you used to sing when you were little?

♪ With my hands on myself ♪

That one.

♪ What have we here ♪

♪ These are my eye peepers, nothing to fear ♪

♪ Eye peepers, brain box, and wibbly, wobbly, woos ♪

♪ That's what they taught me when I went to school ♪

You'll never hurt me.

Really, are you sure?

[body thudding]

Did that hurt, darling?

Did it?

Did that fucking hurt?

♪ With my hands on my ♪

[Hugh chuckling]

Well, it's a great piece of cutting now by Susanne Bier.

[people laughing]

It is wonderful.

This was my idea, wibbly wobbly woos,

and with my hands on myself.

It was a song that I used to sing with my cousins

in the car, so well done me, 'cause I think it's quite good,

especially in contrast to

smashing that poor girl's head against the wall.

I remember dreading the scene, I remember thinking,

this is really, really difficult when it was on paper

that he's kind of breaking up,

and I thought, I may not be able to do this,

and I did have a long panic about it.

A long, long, long panic,

sitting in my house in France, scribbling notes,

and I don't think I ever planned my voice would crack.

What I did do in, in this scene and in other scenes

when the real Jonathan made brief appearances

was I remember my eyes slightly de-focused.

I did something with my eyes

where they don't quite see properly,

just for a moment or two.

That was my way of suddenly being the real Jonathan,

and, and and throughout, I had it in my script.

I always have zillions of notes in my script,

and they were, in this case,

they all were under two sections.

There was always RJ, for Real Jonathan,

and FJ or something for Fake Jonathan,

which was most of him, he was mostly fake.

He's this wonderful child cancer doctor

who's just great and charming and lovely,

and then just occasionally, the real guy would poke through.

♪ And that's what they taught me when I went to school ♪

You'll never leave me.

Really?

You'll never-

[body thudding]

It seems to me

that that's how we all operate.

There's always a sad jelly somewhere inside us.

There's some psychosis, some hurt, something,

and behavior is the layers we wrap around it

to protect that jelly.

American actors traditionally have gone on about emotion.

I need to emote.

Well, yeah, but most of the time, that's hidden.

We try to hide our emotions,

or pretend we're actually feeling something else.

So there's very few moments, I think in life,

when naked emotion comes through.

It does, but it's, it's, it's rare,

and especially if you're British.

Yeah, I, I maybe I, I do seat,

suit some of these quite British characters who are

incredibly defended

and have layer upon layer of shell around them.

[upbeat pop music]

[film rattling]

As I've got closer to God

through genre and rigorous study,

as I worked on my personal relationship with Heavenly Father

and I think strengthened it,

do you know what I found?

The more you know, the less you know.

I went through this process I have of, of

going through the script with a very, very fine-tooth comb

and asking myself, Why does he say this?

Why does he do that?

Every tiny moment, why?

And sometimes, the answers to those questions

open a whole avenue of possibilities

about what might have been his history,

things that might have happened to him

to make him who he is,

and I typed them all into a computer

and the thing gets bigger and bigger

and mushrooms into this huge biography,

and whether or not that actually helps, I don't know.

I think it does,

but I know that it helps my nerves

if I do several hours of this work every day for weeks,

even months before the filming, I, I feel a bit less tense.

And by the time I was 50,

I was malnourished from the fast food of religion

I'd been packing into my brain

for the best part of a decade.

Every sect, cult, creed, and denomination

all claimed to be the one true doctrine,

and yet, none seemed true when held under the microscope.

I think the big debate for me in this scene was

how much of what he's saying here, he means.

Did he ever have a wrestle with faith,

or how much is just dicking with them

and beginning to unsettle them?

Which is something that he's addicted to doing with women,

unsettling them,

disorientating them, exerting control over them,

and then, well, I, I shan't spoil the film.

So I wondered what else was out there.

I promise you the last thing I wanted to do

was find the one true religion.

[suspenseful music]

But unfortunately, I did.

In a closeup like this one, as it pushes in on my face,

I'm sure I did various versions in different takes

where the chronometer was dialed up or down

because I needed to give the directors options in the edit.

I felt that he was probably one of these guys,

or one of these people who sadly,

despite incredible intellectual powers,

he's a very bright man,

just finds it hard to have friends

and close relationships with people.

They, they slightly recoil from him,

and I have always felt

that this was a source of great sadness to him.

I've witnessed people I know and, and quite love

who, who are like that

and who compensate by trying to be fun.

They try to be fun.

They try to be pranksters, jokers,

and they think this is gonna make them popular,

and actually it just makes it more and more creepy,

but he's quite, he's quite good at these things.

So to begin with, it is plausible

and the girls come into the house

and it's only gradually that they realize

there's something very, very wrong.

There's two things I think you absolutely have to have.

One is to understand their inner pain,

'cause everything's compensation.

I think all behavior is sort of compensation

for some kind of suffering,

and if you've got that,

then the audience will be very interested.

They, they, it's not just a character baddie,

it's, it's a, it's a human

and it's, it's very much more watchable.

Secondly, and it sort of part of the same thing in a way is

I've got to either like them or enjoy them.

I liked being him, I, I certainly enjoyed being him.

I'm surprised I said that, but in a way I think you have to.

[upbeat pop music]

[film rattling]

That's enough of that.

It was very nice of you if you did watch any of this.

I appreciate it.

Bye.

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