Hugh Grant admits he became his Four Weddings character in real life: ‘People were rightly repelled’

Grant says the popularity of those roles made him believe he could assimilate more aspects of the characters into his own personality

Hugh Grant has said he pretended to be more like his character from Four Weddings and A Funeral in real life but ended up with people being “repelled” by it.

After the success of 1994’s Four Weddings and A Funeral, Grant went on to play several romantic comedy leads in films like Notting Hill and Love, Actually.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, Grant explained that the popularity of those roles made him believe that he could continue to enjoy it if he assimilated more aspects of the characters he played into his own personality.

“The irony of the Richard Curtis parts I played is that they were actually character roles for me –I’m not that stutter-y, blink-y guy. The catastrophic mistake I made was that because Four Weddings was such a gigantic success, I thought, Oh well, this is the way of infinite wealth and success. People are eating up that person,” he said.

“So I did him in real life: I started doing interviews. In my Golden Globe acceptance speech from 1995, I said, ‘I love you, gosh, blah blah. Thank you so much’ – what a d***. I’m playing the character because I thought everyone was eating him up. It was never me at all.

“People quite rightly were repelled by it in the end.”

Hugh Grant in ’Four Weddings and a Funeral’ (Rank Film Distributors)

Curtis is one of UK’s most successful comedy screenwriters, known for romantic comedies like Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Notting Hill (1999), and Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001).

Grant can next be seen in Heretic. He plays a man who captures a pair of young, female Mormon missionaries and subjects them to a chilling series of psychological tests and games.

He credits his history as a romcom lead with the charm he needed to pull off his role as a man who is able to trick the young women in Heretic.

“You don’t want the audience to be sitting there saying, ‘These girls are morons, the guy is clearly a weirdo and a dick,’” he said. “I was under some pressure to use my powers of warmth and charm.”

Hugh Grant as Mr Reed in ‘Heretic’ (A24)

Heretic is written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who made their names writing the script for John Krasinski’s 2018 horror A Quiet Place.

The film received rave reviews after it premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, with early viewers praising its “intelligent” and “tense” plot.

Grant has taken on more villainous roles in recent years, including in films like Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, The Gentlemen, and Paddington 2, and 2020 HBO series The Undoing.

However, Heretic will be his first appearance in a horror film since Ken Russell’s 1988 pagan horror comedy The Lair of the White Worm.

Heretic releases in cinemas on 15 November 2024.