Hugh Grant

• 1. A Reluctant Star

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  As of 2025, Hugh Grant's films have grossed more than US$4 billion worldwide. The English actor has nonetheless called being a successful actor a mistake. He once hoped that film stardom would be only "a phase" in his life, lasting no more than ten years. Instead, his career has run for more than 35 years. It has brought him an Honorary César in 2006. In 2022, Time Out magazine listed him among Britain's 50 greatest actors of all time.

  How did a man who keeps saying acting was never his calling build a record like that? Why did the floppy-haired romantic lead of the 1990s turn into a scene-stealing villain and a character actor? And what led a famously private performer to take on the newspaper industry in public?

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• 2. Scholarships And Sketches

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  Hugh John Mungo Grant was born on the 9th of September 1960 at Hammersmith Hospital, the second son of Fynvola Susan MacLean and Captain James Murray Grant. His grandfather, Colonel James Murray Grant, held the DSO for his bravery and leadership at Saint-Valery-en-Caux during the Second World War. The genealogist Anthony Adolph described the family history as "a colourful Anglo-Scottish tapestry of warriors, empire-builders, and aristocracy." Relatives on the family tree include Sir Walter Raleigh and a sister of Prime Minister Spencer Perceval.

  Captain Grant served eight years in the Seaforth Highlanders, in Malaya and Germany. Afterwards he ran a carpet business, played golf and painted watercolours, and he raised his family in Chiswick, West London. In September 2006, his son organised a charity exhibition of those paintings at The John Martin Gallery, titled "James Grant: 30 Years of Watercolours." Hugh's mother taught Latin, French and music in the state schools of west London for more than 30 years. On Inside the Actors Studio in 2002, Grant credited her with "any acting genes that he might have." He has said the family was not always affluent, despite both parents coming from military families. Childhood summers meant hunting and fishing with his grandfather in Scotland. He also has an older brother, James, known as Jamie, who is an investment banker in New York.

  Grant began school at Hogarth Primary in Chiswick, moved to St Peter's Primary in Hammersmith, and then went to Wetherby School, a private preparatory school in Notting Hill. From 1969 to 1978 he attended Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith, then a direct grant grammar school, on a scholarship. There he played in the first XV at rugby, as well as cricket and football. He also represented the school on the quiz show Top of the Form, a contest between two teams of four secondary school students.

  In 1979 a Galsworthy scholarship took him to New College, Oxford, where he read English literature and graduated with an upper second class degree. He saw acting as nothing more than a creative outlet. Even so, he joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society and played Fabian in a production of Twelfth Night. He also starred in his first film, Privileged (1982), made by the Oxford University Film Foundation. An offer from the Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London to pursue a PhD in art history fell through because he failed to secure a grant.

  After Privileged, Grant tried a string of jobs, including assistant groundsman at Fulham Football Club and tutoring. He also wrote comedy sketches for television. At Talkback Productions he wrote and produced radio commercials for products such as Mighty White bread and Red Stripe lager. At a screening of Privileged at BAFTA in London, a talent agent offered to represent him. Grant still meant to begin an MPhil at the Courtauld, so he declined. He then reconsidered, reasoning that a year of acting might save money for his studies.

  The Bounty (1984), starring Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins, soon offered him a supporting role. He could not take it because he lacked an Equity card, which could be earned only through regional theatre. To get one, he joined the Nottingham Playhouse and lived for a year at Park Terrace in The Park Estate. Director Richard Digby Day cast him in small roles in Lady Windermere's Fan, an avant-garde Hamlet and Coriolanus.

  Bored with small parts, Grant founded a sketch-comedy group with friends Chris Lang and Andy Taylor. They called it The Jockeys of Norfolk, a name taken from Shakespeare's Richard III. The group toured London's pub comedy circuit, with stops at The George IV in Chiswick, Canal Cafe Theatre in Little Venice and The King's Head in Islington. At the 1985 Edinburgh Festival Fringe their Nativity sketch, told as an Ealing comedy, was a hit. It earned them a spot on Russell Harty's BBC2 show Harty Goes to....

  In 1986 Grant played Eric Birling in An Inspector Calls at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, directed by Richard Wilson. Grevel Lindop, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, called the performance "outstanding." Across 1985 and 1986, Grant also took minor roles in eight television productions, among them TV films, historical miniseries and single episodes of series.

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• 3. Period Dramas And Fame

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  Maurice, released in 1987, gave Grant his first leading film role. Merchant-Ivory adapted the Edwardian drama from E. M. Forster's novel. Grant played Clive Durham opposite James Wilby as Maurice Hall, and the two men were lovers on screen. They shared the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival.

  White Mischief (1987), a film nominated for a BAFTA Award, had him play Hugh Cholmondeley, 3rd Baron Delamere. In The Dawning (1988) he appeared opposite Anthony Hopkins and Jean Simmons. That same year he led Ken Russell's horror film The Lair of the White Worm. He also played Lord Byron in the Spanish production Remando al viento (1988), which won a Goya Award. Television followed with the role of Charles Heidsieck, a legendary champagne merchant, in Champagne Charlie (1989). In 1990 he took a small role in The Big Man, opposite Liam Neeson, and adopted a Scottish accent. The film follows a Scottish miner, played by Neeson, who loses his job during a union strike. In 1991 he played Julie Andrews' gay son in the ABC television film Our Sons.

  In 1991 Grant also starred as Frederic Chopin in Impromptu, opposite Judy Davis as his lover George Sand. Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon followed in 1992. Grant played a fastidious, proper British tourist, married, who is drawn toward the sexual hedonism of a seductive French woman and her embittered, paraplegic American husband. The Washington Post called the film an "anti-romantic opus of sexual obsession and cruelty." In 1993 he took a supporting role in the Merchant-Ivory drama The Remains of the Day. Looking back, Grant joked about these productions as "Europuddings, where you would have a French script, a Spanish director and English actors." The English actors, he explained, were there because that was thought to be the way to sell the film to America.

  At 32, Grant said he was close to giving up acting when the script for Four Weddings and a Funeral surprised him. He recalled that "If you read as many bad scripts as I did" you feel real gratitude when "the guy actually is funny." Released in 1994 with Grant as its protagonist, the film became the highest-grossing British film to date, with a worldwide box office in excess of $244 million. Grant became an overnight international star. The book The Trouble with Men: Masculinities in European and Hollywood Cinema notes that tabloids, chat shows and women's magazines promoted his image endlessly. It adds that Grant took care to play up to the affable, self-deprecating English gent. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards. It earned Grant a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

  The role of Charles, a bohemian and debonair bachelor, temporarily typecast him. Grant found it an inside joke that audiences assumed the star shared the personality of screenwriter Richard Curtis, who writes about his own life. He later said it "did become frustrating after a bit that people made two assumptions." One was that he was the character, when, he said, nothing could be further from the truth. The other was that this was all he could do. Because those films were successful, he said, nobody bothered to rent the others he had made.

  In July 1994 Grant signed a two-year production deal with Castle Rock Entertainment. By October he was founder and director of the UK-based Simian Films Limited. He named his then-girlfriend, Elizabeth Hurley, head of development to look for projects. Simian produced two Grant vehicles in the 1990s. It lost a bid to produce About a Boy to Robert De Niro's TriBeCa Productions. The company closed its US office in 2002, and Grant resigned as director in December 2005.

  Before Four Weddings reached cinemas, Grant had reunited with its director Mike Newell for the tragicomedy An Awfully Big Adventure (1995). The New York Times labelled it a "determinedly off-beat film." Grant played the supercilious director of a repertory company in Liverpool after the Second World War. Roger Ebert wrote, "It shows that he has range as an actor." The San Francisco Chronicle disagreed, saying the film "plays like a vanity production for Grant." Janet Maslin called him "superb" and said the film represents "the road not taken." It caught him, she wrote, as the clever, versatile character actor he was then becoming. His next role was a cartographer in 1917 Wales in The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain (1995).

  Nine Months (1995), directed by Chris Columbus, was Grant's first studio-financed Hollywood project, opposite Julianne Moore. It was a box office hit and almost universally panned. The Washington Post called it a "grotesquely pandering caper" and singled out Grant's "insufferable muggings" as a child psychiatrist unhappy about his girlfriend's pregnancy. Grant agrees with the harsh verdict. In a 2016 interview he said, "I really ruined it." He explained that he panicked at the jump in pay and scale, and that he "forgot to do basic acting things, like mean it." The result, he said, was pulled faces and overacting. In his words, "it was a shocker."

  Also in 1995, he played Emma Thompson's suitor in Sense and Sensibility, her Academy Award-winning adaptation of Jane Austen, directed by Ang Lee. He then played a supercilious court portrait painter in Restoration. Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote that he was "having a fine and liberating time," and Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times found "some delicious moments." Grant made his debut as a film producer with the 1996 thriller Extreme Measures. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert each gave it three stars out of four. Siskel called Grant's work "a refreshing standout."

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• 4. Reinventing The Cad

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  Notting Hill arrived in 1999, after a three-year hiatus, and paired Grant with Julia Roberts. Richard Curtis wrote it, and much of the team behind Four Weddings produced it for Working Title. It displaced Four Weddings as the biggest British hit in cinema history, earning $363 million worldwide. CNN's Paul Clinton called it "another funny and heartwarming story about love against all odds." Reactions to Grant's Golden Globe-nominated performance varied. Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com complained of "shambling self-caricature." The film let both stars satirise international notoriety. Grant played a faux-journalist at a dull press junket, which The New York Times called "a delightfully funny deadpan."

  Mickey Blue Eyes, a fish-out-of-water mob comedy, was Grant's second production that year. Critics dismissed it, and it performed modestly at the box office. Roger Ebert thought Grant was "wrong for the role." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times took the opposite view. "If he'd been on the Titanic, fewer lives would have been lost," Turan wrote, praising Grant's gift for rescuing doomed ventures.

  On The Today Show in 2000, while promoting Woody Allen's Small Time Crooks, Grant told host Matt Lauer, "It's my millennium of bastards." In the film he played David, an art dealer. Critic Andrew Sarris called the character "petty, petulant" and one of the sleaziest Allen had ever created. The New York Times praised "a perfect blend of charm and nasty calculation." That year Grant also joined the supervisory board of IM Internationalmedia AG, a powerful Munich-based film and media company.

  In 2001, Bridget Jones's Diary gave him Daniel Cleaver, a charming but womanising book publisher. Variety said the turn was "as sly an overthrow of a star's polished posh" as any in memory. Helen Fielding's novel was the source, and the film earned $281 million worldwide. The Washington Post found him fitting as "a cruel, manipulative cad."

  About a Boy in 2002 cast him as Will Freeman, a trust-funded womaniser, in the adaptation of Nick Hornby's best-selling novel. The BBC praised an "immaculate comic performance." Roger Ebert observed that "the Cary Grant department is understaffed." The film opened a day after Star Wars: Episode II, and it took a more modest $129 million worldwide. It still earned Grant his third Golden Globe nomination. The London Film Critics Circle named him Best British Actor, and GQ honoured him as one of its men of the year 2002.

  At 41, Grant had lost weight and abandoned his trademark floppy hair. Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly noted the change and wrote that "Hugh Grant has grown up." Gleiberman said the stuttering sherry-club mannerisms that were once his signature were gone. What remained was lightness and witty cynicism, in what Gleiberman called "the rare actor who can play a silver-tongued sleaze with a hidden inner decency."

  Two Weeks Notice (2002), with Sandra Bullock, earned $199 million internationally but received poor reviews. The Village Voice judged Grant's spoiled billionaire real estate boss "little more than a Britishism machine." Love Actually followed in 2003, with Grant as the British Prime Minister. Working Title released the film at Christmas, promoted as "the ultimate romantic comedy," and it took $246 million internationally. It marked Richard Curtis's directorial debut. Curtis told The New York Times that Grant adamantly pushed to make the character more authoritative and less haplessly charming than earlier Curtis heroes. Ebert said Grant had "flowered into an absolutely splendid romantic comedian." Rex Reed instead called the performance "an oversexed bachelor spin on Tony Blair."

  In 2004, Grant reprised Daniel Cleaver in a small part in Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, which made more than $262 million. After two years away from the screen he reteamed with About a Boy's Paul Weitz for the black comedy American Dreamz (2006). He played the acerbic host of an American Idol-like reality show, an amalgam of Simon Cowell and Ryan Seacrest. Caryn James of The New York Times wrote that nothing in the show is real except "the black hole at the centre of the host's heart." The film failed financially, but Grant was generously praised. Carina Chocano said he was "twice as enjoyable as the preening bad guy as he was as the bumbling good guy."

  Music and Lyrics (2007) paired him with Drew Barrymore. Grant plays a has-been pop singer, based loosely on Andrew Ridgeley of the 1980s duo Wham! He neither listens to music nor owns any CDs. For the role he learned to sing, play the piano and dance a few mannered steps, and he studied the mannerisms of prominent musicians. The film took $145 million and let him mock disposable pop stardom. In 2009 he starred opposite Sarah Jessica Parker in Marc Lawrence's romantic comedy Did You Hear About the Morgans?, a critical failure and box office disappointment. Grant has traced his move away from romantic comedies to that failure.

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• 5. Playing Against Type

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  Cloud Atlas (2012), the science fiction epic by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, had Grant playing six different dark characters. In the same year he voiced a role in Aardman's stop motion animation The Pirates! Band of Misfits. He has said he expected to turn down Cloud Atlas, as he normally does, but he admired the Wachowskis enormously. One of his parts was a cannibal about 2,000 years in the future. He recalled thinking he could do that easily, then standing in a cannibal skirt on a mountaintop in Germany. Then, he says, he was thinking, "I can't do that! Just give me a witty line!"

  The Rewrite (2014) reunited Grant with Marc Lawrence and put him opposite Marisa Tomei. Reviews were mixed to positive, and many critics praised Grant. Quentin Tarantino named it one of his favourite films of the year and called Grant a "perfect leading man." In 2015 Grant played Alexander Waverly in Guy Ritchie's crime thriller The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Entertainment Weekly called his turn "the only bit of fun" in the film. Glenn Kenny of Rogerebert.com said Grant did not save the movie but "peps things up considerably" when he returns in the last half-hour.

  Florence Foster Jenkins (2016), directed by Stephen Frears and starring Meryl Streep, gave Grant the role of St. Clair Bayfield, partner of the title character. Critics called it his "career-best" (Screen International) and "best work of his career" (Variety). Indiewire named it "one of his best performances in years." Rolling Stone said he "goes deeper, darker and riskier." Rafer Guzman of Newsday predicted that Grant had sealed his first-ever Oscar nomination. He earned his first individual Screen Actors Guild Award nomination, plus nominations for a BAFTA, a Golden Globe, a Critics' Choice Award, a Satellite Award and a European Film Award. Most award pundits expected an Academy Award nomination too, but it never came.

  Paddington 2 (2017) gave him Phoenix Buchanan, the main antagonist, in a commercial and critical success. The Guardian called the performance "scene-stealing." IGN praised the egotistical obliviousness with which Grant wears each ridiculous disguise. He won the London Film Critics' Circle Award for Supporting Actor of the Year and earned a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. In 2019, IndieWire ranked the performance the 22nd greatest movie performance of the decade.

  In 2018 Grant returned to television screens after 25 years, as Jeremy Thorpe in the BBC One miniseries A Very English Scandal. Ben Whishaw played Norman Josiffe, and the series was Grant's second collaboration with director Stephen Frears. Both the series and Grant drew wide praise. Digital Spy said there has always been "a bit of the devil in Grant's best turns," and that in Thorpe he had found his richest part in years. The New Statesman called it "the role of Grant's life." Nominations followed from the Primetime Emmy Awards, the Screen Actors Guild, the Golden Globes and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Limited Series or Movie.

  In 2019 Grant played Fletcher, a seedy and unscrupulous private investigator, in Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen, their second collaboration after The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Grant called it "a fun bit of casting," a nod to his campaigning with the group Hacked Off. He said he based the character on tabloid reporters who "used to be my enemies and now they're my friends." Reviews of the film were mostly mixed. Stephen Dalton of The Hollywood Reporter called Grant "a beating comic heart" of it. Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal wrote, "in a word, Mr. Grant is sensational."

  The Undoing premiered on HBO on the 25th of October 2020, with Nicole Kidman and Donald Sutherland in the cast. Grant played Jonathan, a man accused of murder. Reviews of the miniseries were mixed, though Grant's performance was widely acclaimed. Critic Caryn James said he gave Jonathan the "richest part" and kept viewers off guard about how far to trust him. Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com was less impressed with the series but called Grant's performance the "series-best." Grant received nominations from the Screen Actors Guild, the Golden Globes and the Critics' Choice Television Awards.

  Grant reunited with Guy Ritchie again in 2023 for the action film Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre, alongside Jason Statham and Aubrey Plaza. After several delays from an original early 2022 date, it flopped at the box office with mixed reviews. The A.V. Club still said Grant "delivers a fantastic character performance." In Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves he played Forge, an ambitious rogue and con artist. Jonah Nink of the Chicago Reader judged that none of the cast could hold a fireball to him.

  In Wonka, also released in 2023, Grant played Lofty, a supercilious Oompa-Loompa with a grudge against Willy Wonka. Director Paul King told Empire magazine that when he reread the Oompa-Loompa poems he heard a cynical, sarcastic, cruel, funny, wicked voice. He thought, "That's sort of a bit like Hugh!" The casting first met backlash from the dwarfism community, but Grant later received praise. Nick Levine of NME wrote that a "scene-stealing Grant provides the comic highlights." In 2024 he guest-starred in Stephen Frears's HBO limited series The Regime, with Kate Winslet, earning a Critics' Choice Television nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He also played a fictional version of Thurl Ravenscroft, voice of Tony the Tiger, in Jerry Seinfeld's comedy Unfrosted. Matt Schimkowitz of The A.V. Club named him the film's "MVP."

  Heretic (2024), an A24 horror film, drew mostly positive reviews. Variety called his role yet another "wildly against-type" one, and Bilge Ebiri of New York Magazine called it a "riveting turn." It brought nominations for a Golden Globe, a Critics' Choice Award and a BAFTA for Best Actor in a Leading Role. In 2025 he returned to romantic comedy in a supporting part, reprising Daniel Cleaver in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. Together with The Rewrite, it is one of only two exceptions to his break from the genre since Cloud Atlas. Grant says the role is brief, that the film has more dramatic depth, and that the script made him cry. The Hollywood Reporter said he "brings a shot of mischievous vitality every time he's onscreen." The Guardian, in a negative review, still singled him out, along with Emma Thompson, as a cast member who did not phone it in.

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• 6. Mannerisms And Perfectionism

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  Grant's honours tally stands at one BAFTA Award from five nominations, one Golden Globe from seven, and the Volpi Cup, plus nominations for two Primetime Emmys and four Screen Actors Guild Awards. Critics have never agreed on what his talent actually is. He began as a character actor, became predominantly a comedy actor from the mid-1990s, and stayed one into the 2010s. In 2020 he told The Sydney Morning Herald, "I got old and ugly and I'm not appropriate for romantic comedy films anymore, which has been a great blessing." Yet he is still often associated with the Richard Curtis comedies, and the British press routinely compares young romantic comedy actors to him.

  During his romantic comedy years, Roger Ebert defended the narrow range of Grant's performances. Others dismissed him as a "one-trick pony." Eric Fellner, co-owner of Working Title Films and a longtime collaborator, said, "His range hasn't been fully tested, but each performance is unique." Many of his 1990s films followed one plot, an optimistic bachelor who suffers embarrassing incidents before finding true love, often with an American woman. In those films he played on the stereotype of the repressed Englishman, gently satirising his characters while playing against type.

  Rita Kempley of The Washington Post objected to his "comic overreactions," and added, "He's got more tics than Benny Hill." Stephen Hunter, also of the Post, said he must get "his jiving and shucking under control." Film historian David Thomson wrote in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film that Grant equated screen acting with "itchy mannerisms." By the 2000s his persona had turned into a cynical, self-loathing cad. Claudia Puig of USA Today welcomed the loss of the "Aren't I adorable" mannerisms. According to Carina Chocano, critics most often say that he reinvented himself in Bridget Jones's Diary and About a Boy, and that he fears becoming a parody of himself.

  Co-workers describe a different Grant on set. He calls himself a "committed and passionate" perfectionist. The critic Dave Kehr wrote that Grant is known as a meticulous performer who prepares carefully and works hard to make it look easy, though that is not a trait he admires in himself. Colleagues note his demand for endless takes until a shot meets his own standard. In 2020, after moving into more character roles, he said he "enjoys acting now."

  The director Mike Newell once said there is at least as much of Hugh that is charismatic and intellectual, with a tongue "maybe too clever for its own good," as there is of him that is gorgeous and woolly. Paul Weitz said Grant "perceives flaws in himself and other people, and then he cares about their humanity nonetheless." A 2007 Vogue profile described a "professionally misanthropic mystique." Grant is known for guarding his privacy. When probed, he offers what is described as "a dead bat to any question he feels is not general enough." British newspapers regularly call him "grumpy."

  Industry habits draw his scorn. He dislikes focus groups, market research and the emphasis on opening weekend box-office numbers. "What was wrong with the way they used to release films, more slowly, let them build?" he has asked. He dropped his agent in 2006, ending a 10-year relationship with CAA. As he put it, "I've never taken any advice on anything."

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• 7. Tabloids On Trial

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  On the 27th of June 1995, police in Los Angeles arrested Grant in a vice operation near Sunset Boulevard. He was receiving oral sex in a public place from a prostitute, Divine Brown. He pleaded no contest. Judge Robert J. Sandoval fined him $1,180, placed him on two years of summary probation and ordered him to complete an AIDS education program.

  The arrest came about two weeks before the release of Nine Months, his first major studio film, which he was due to promote on several American television shows. On The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, the host asked, "What the hell were you thinking?" Grant gave a short reply. "I think you know in life what's a good thing to do and what's a bad thing, and I did a bad thing. And there you have it." On Larry King Live he refused repeated invitations to probe his psyche. Psychoanalysis, he said, was "more of an American syndrome," and he was "a bit old fashioned." He told the host, "I don't have excuses." CNN reported that many applauded his honesty. Radio host Scott Shannon said Grant "faced the music" with tongue in cheek.

  In 1996 Grant won substantial damages from News (UK) Ltd over an article his lawyers called "highly defamatory." The company's newspaper Today had published it in January 1995. It falsely claimed that Grant gave a young extra a "foul-mouthed tongue lashing" on the set of The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain. Today ceased publication the following November.

  On the 27th of April 2007, Grant accepted undisclosed damages from Associated Newspapers. The claims concerned his relationships with former girlfriends, in three articles in the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, published on the 18th, 21st and the 24th of February. His lawyer said the allegations and factual assertions were all false. In a written statement Grant said he was tired of those papers publishing "almost entirely fictional articles about my private life for their own financial gain." He hoped the court statement would remind people that the so-called "close friends" or "close sources" behind such stories "almost never exist."

  In April 2007 as well, Grant was arrested on allegations of assault made by the paparazzo Ian Whittaker. He made no official statement. The Crown Prosecution Service dropped the charges on the 1st of June 2007, citing insufficient evidence.

  In April 2011 the New Statesman published Grant's article "The Bugger, Bugged." It described a conversation, secretly taped by Grant, with Paul McMullan, a former journalist and paparazzo for News of the World. McMullan alleged in unguarded comments that editors at the Daily Mail and News of the World, particularly Andy Coulson, had ordered journalists to tap phones illegally. He said senior British politicians knew. He also said every Prime Minister since Margaret Thatcher had cultivated a close relationship with Rupert Murdoch and his senior executives. McMullan stressed the friendship between David Cameron and Rebekah Brooks, then Rebekah Wade. He said his submission to parliament had been that Cameron was "either a liar or an idiot." He also claimed that police had taken bribes from tabloid journalists, saying "20 percent of the Met has taken backhanders from tabloid hacks."

  The article drew wide interest for its revelations and for the novelty of Grant turning the tables on a tabloid journalist. Grant also appeared on BBC Radio 4. Coverage shifted from media interest to widespread public outrage, and eventually political outrage, only when it emerged that the voicemail of the murdered Milly Dowler had been hacked and evidence for her murder enquiry deleted. Grant became something of a spokesman against Murdoch's News Corporation, and in July 2011 he appeared on BBC television's Question Time. He later said, "It's been fascinating to have a little excursion into another world." He added that he needed it, to deal with real life instead of creating "synthetic life."

  On the 5th of February 2018, Mirror Group Newspapers apologised for its actions towards Grant and other public figures, calling the affair "morally wrong." Grant had accepted a six-figure sum to settle a High Court action. He donated the payout to the press campaign group Hacked Off. In April 2024 he announced a settlement with News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun. Grant had claimed that its journalists used private investigators to tap his phone and burgle his house. NGN denied the claims. He said he "did not want to accept" the "enormous sum of money" offered. A trial, he said, would be very expensive, with a bill of up to £10 million even if he won.

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• 8. Family, Politics And Causes

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  In 1987, while playing Lord Byron in the Spanish production Remando al viento, Grant met the actress Elizabeth Hurley. She was cast in a supporting role as Byron's former lover Claire Clairmont. He began dating Hurley during filming, and their relationship drew much media attention. They separated in May 2000. Grant is godfather to Hurley's son Damian, born in 2002.

  In September 2011, Grant had a daughter with Tinglan Hong. Her Chinese name, Jing Xi, means "happy surprise." His publicist described the relationship with Hong as a "fleeting affair." In 2012 Grant said Hong had been "badly treated" by the media. Press intrusion prevented him from attending the birth, and Hong obtained an injunction so that he could visit them in peace. In September 2012, a son was born to the Swedish television producer Anna Eberstein. Grant reunited briefly with Hong, and she gave birth to his third child, a son, in December 2012. He and Eberstein have two daughters, born in December 2015 and March 2018. Grant has five children with two women. He and Eberstein married on the 25th of May 2018.

  In 2011, Grant appeared at the Liberal Democrats' conference to discuss the News International phone-hacking scandal, where he briefly met party leader Nick Clegg. He told the activists, "You have never been in bed with these scumbags." In the 2015 general election he supported the Liberal Democrat MP Danny Alexander and later hosted a dinner for the party. He wrote in an email sent by Paddy Ashdown, "I am not a Lib Dem, a Tory, a Labourite or anything in particular but I recognise political guts." That year he also endorsed two Labour candidates, Tom Watson and his former agent, Michael Foster. During the 2019 general election he campaigned for tactical voting to stop a Conservative majority and Brexit. He was seen canvassing with Liberal Democrat candidates, Labour candidates and the independent Dominic Grieve. In the 2024 general election he endorsed Carla Denyer, co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, for the new Bristol Central seat. He called her "a politician with integrity, who puts the public first."

  Fulham sits at the centre of Grant's sporting life. After college he continued to play in a Sunday-morning football league in south-west London, and he remains an "impassioned Fulham supporter." He also supports the Italian club Como, and his other interests include tennis and snooker. In 2011 the BBC apologised after Grant made an offhand joke about homosexuality and rugby, when he was invited into the commentary box for an England v Scotland game at Twickenham Stadium.

  In 2018 Grant described a long-running tension with Robert Downey Jr. on set. "He hated me," Grant said. He added that Downey "took one look at me and wanted to kill me. I was so hurt." Downey went on Twitter to make amends, and Grant agreed. Grant also said that Drew Barrymore did not get along with him during Music and Lyrics. "She was very L.A. and I was an old grumpy Londoner," he explained. He thinks the chemistry between them is rather good anyway. "Sometimes tension makes a good crackle," he said. He once listed Julianne Moore and Rachel Weisz alongside Barrymore as leading ladies he did not get along with. On The Graham Norton Show he said he did not know why he mentioned Weisz and was probably "going for a 'comedy triple'." He is now on good terms with Barrymore and appeared on The Drew Barrymore Show. He has praised Sandra Bullock, Sarah Jessica Parker, Emma Thompson and Renée Zellweger, who he called "delightful." Meryl Streep, he said, was "a genius."

  In 2001 Grant bought the Andy Warhol print "Liz" for £2m. He sold it in 2007 for £13m.

  Grant is patron of the Fynvola Foundation, named after his late mother. It supports the Lady Dane Farmhouse, a home in Faversham for adults with learning disabilities. His mother died of pancreatic cancer at 67, in 2001. Since then he has worked as a fundraiser and ambassador for Marie Curie Cancer Care, promoting its annual Great Daffodil Appeal on several occasions. He is also a patron of Pancreatic Cancer Action and of the DIPEx Charity, which operates the website Healthtalkonline.

  In December 2023, Grant worked with Hammersmith and Fulham Council on its annual Big H&F Christmas Day Lunch. He spent Christmas Day serving dinner to elderly residents who might otherwise have spent it alone, at risk of social isolation and loneliness.

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