50 Fun Facts About Hugh Grant

In which city was Hugh Grant born?

London: he was born in Hammersmith, and in 2023 he spent Christmas Day back in the borough serving lunch to elderly residents who would otherwise have eaten alone.

Grant played the British Prime Minister in which 2003 ensemble comedy?

Love Actually has him dance through 10 Downing Street to the Pointer Sisters, a scene he dreaded filming and has since called "absolute hell".

Grant starred opposite Julia Roberts in which 1999 film?

Notting Hill casts him as a bookseller who, mistaken for a reporter at the film star's press junket, claims to write for Horse & Hound magazine.

Which 1994 comedy made Grant an overnight international star?

Four Weddings and a Funeral arrived when, at 32, he was close to giving up acting; it became the most successful British film up to that time.

Grant plays womanising publisher Daniel Cleaver in which film series?

Bridget Jones: he returned as Cleaver in 2004 and again, two decades later, in Mad About the Boy, after reading a script that he says made him cry.

Grant read English literature at which university?

Oxford, where he treated acting as a hobby yet ended up in his first film, a drama made by fellow students and paid for by the university's film foundation.

Grant began a 13-year relationship with which actress in 1987?

Elizabeth Hurley met him on a Spanish film set in 1987, and after they parted in 2000 the two stayed close enough for him to become godfather to her son.

Hugh Grant played what kind of character in Wonka (2023)?

An Oompa-Loompa: director Paul King reread Roald Dahl's poems, heard a cynical, sarcastic voice in them and thought, "That's sort of a bit like Hugh!"

Which 2024 A24 horror film earned Grant a BAFTA nomination?

Heretic casts him as Mr Reed, a genial homeowner who invites two young missionaries in to talk about faith and then tells them the front door is locked on a timer.

Who was Grant's co-star in Two Weeks Notice (2002)?

Sandra Bullock plays the lawyer who hands in her notice after her billionaire boss calls her away from a friend's big day to help him decide what to wear.

Which author created Daniel Cleaver, the cad Grant played in 2001?

Helen Fielding based her novel loosely on Pride and Prejudice, which is why Cleaver's rival for the heroine is a stuffy barrister named Darcy.

Who wrote and starred in Sense and Sensibility (1995) alongside Grant?

Emma Thompson has said she wrote the part of Edward Ferrars with Grant in mind; her screenplay went on to win an Oscar.

Hugh Grant voiced the Pirate Captain in a 2012 stop-motion comedy from which studio?

Aardman, the studio behind Wallace and Gromit, cast him as a hapless captain who will try anything to win the Pirate of the Year award.

Who co-starred with Grant in Music and Lyrics (2007)?

Drew Barrymore plays the woman hired to water his plants, who turns out to be a far better lyricist than the professional his washed-up pop star is working with.

Which football club does Grant support?

Fulham: long before he was famous he spent a summer working as an assistant groundsman at Craven Cottage, the club's home ground.

Hugh Grant's 2002 film About a Boy was adapted from a novel by which author?

Nick Hornby's hero, played by Grant, has never had to work: he lives off the royalties from a hit Christmas song his father wrote.

Who starred opposite Grant in HBO's The Undoing?

Nicole Kidman plays a psychologist whose husband, Grant's charming cancer doctor, drops out of contact after a murder and becomes the prime suspect.

What is the name of Grant's villain in Paddington 2?

Phoenix Buchanan, a vain actor whose career has dried up, steals a valuable pop-up book and lets Paddington go to prison for the theft.

Grant played St. Clair Bayfield opposite which star in Florence Foster Jenkins?

Meryl Streep plays the tone-deaf soprano, and Grant's Bayfield protects her by hand-picking her audiences and buying up every copy of a newspaper that pans her.

Who directed Grant in The Gentlemen (2019)?

Guy Ritchie cast him against type as Fletcher, who has turned a gangster's secrets into a film script and offers to sell it back for £20 million.

Who directed Hugh Grant in Sense and Sensibility (1995)?

Ang Lee, a co-star recalled, was taken aback when Grant and the other actors offered suggestions on set, something he was not used to from a cast, until the two sides adjusted.

Grant's 1995 arrest came two weeks before the release of which Julianne Moore comedy?

Nine Months was his first Hollywood lead; instead of hiding he went ahead with the publicity tour and apologised in interview after interview.

Grant played which politician in A Very English Scandal (2018)?

Jeremy Thorpe, the Liberal leader tried in 1979 for conspiring to have his former lover murdered, was acquitted but never held office again; the part brought Grant back to British television after decades away.

Which screenwriter's romantic comedies is Grant most associated with?

Richard Curtis is often called his alter ego: Grant says that at the first rehearsal of their first film he looked at the writer, thought "I see, it's you", and simply copied him.

In The Gentlemen, what is the job of Grant's character Fletcher?

Private investigator: a tabloid editor hires Fletcher to dig up dirt on a drug baron, but he offers to sell what he finds to the baron's own men instead.

Hugh Grant played six roles in which 2012 film?

Cloud Atlas reuses its cast across six eras, and Grant, usually the charmer, got a run of dark roles; he recalled standing on a German mountain in a cannibal's skirt wishing for "a witty line".

Grant's first leading film role, in 1987, adapted a novel by which author?

E. M. Forster kept the novel, a love story between two men, unpublished in his lifetime because of attitudes to homosexuality; it appeared only in 1971, after his death.

Grant played which composer in Impromptu (1991)?

Frédéric Chopin is the frail, timid genius here; it is the novelist George Sand, played by Judy Davis in men's clothes, who does all the pursuing.

Who co-starred with Grant in the 2009 comedy Did You Hear About the Morgans?

Sarah Jessica Parker and Grant play a separated New York couple hidden in small-town Wyoming after witnessing a murder; after it, he has said, he turned away from romantic comedies.

Whom did Hugh Grant marry in 2018, his first marriage at 57?

Anna Eberstein, a Swedish television producer, already had three children with him by the time they married in May 2018.

Grant played which character in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)?

Alexander Waverly reveals late in the film that the heroine has been his undercover agent all along, and he ends it in charge of the two rival spies' new team.

What is the name of Grant's villain in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves?

Forge sells out his own partners, then makes himself Lord of Neverwinter and raises the hero's daughter on a lie about why her father went to prison.

Grant shared the Volpi Cup at Venice for which 1987 film?

Maurice won him the Venice prize jointly with co-star James Wilby; Grant says he got the part under false pretences, because the director had seen his comedy revue and expected him to be funny.

In the Spanish film Remando al viento, Grant played which poet?

Lord Byron: the film recreates the summer of 1816, when his challenge to write a horror story started Mary Shelley on Frankenstein; Grant met his partner of 13 years on the set.

Hugh Grant's own production company made which 1999 mob comedy?

Mickey Blue Eyes stars him as an English auctioneer in New York who gets entangled in the Mafia dealings of his future father-in-law.

Critics likened Grant's talent-show host in American Dreamz to which TV judge?

Simon Cowell was the comparison critics reached for, though writer-director Paul Weitz said he had based the host on Grant himself and the likeness was almost a fluke.

Grant's has-been pop star in Music and Lyrics was loosely based on a member of which duo?

Wham! was the template: his character is the overlooked half of a split 1980s duo, loosely modelled on Andrew Ridgeley, and Grant had to learn to sing and play piano for the part.

In Jerry Seinfeld's Unfrosted (2024), Hugh Grant plays the actor behind which cereal mascot?

Tony the Tiger: Grant plays Thurl Ravenscroft, a long-suffering Shakespearean actor stuck in the mascot role, who talks the other cereal mascots into going on strike.

In The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill…, what is the job of Grant's character?

Cartographer: sent to a Welsh village in 1917, he measures its beloved peak at 984 feet, just short of a mountain, so the villagers pile earth on the summit to make up the difference.

Which director cast Hugh Grant as a cruel theatre boss in An Awfully Big Adventure (1995)?

Mike Newell shot it with him before their earlier film together had even been released, so it preserves the sharp character actor Grant was just before fame fixed his image.

Grant donated a 2018 newspaper settlement to which press campaign group?

Hacked Off received the substantial damages Mirror Group paid him; seven years earlier Grant had helped expose phone hacking by secretly taping a former tabloid journalist.

Which American actor did Grant say 'took one look at me and wanted to kill me'?

Robert Downey Jr., his co-star in Restoration, saw the remark and tweeted an offer to "break bread together soon"; Grant replied that he was ready to bury the hatchet too.

What was the name of Grant's 1980s sketch-comedy group?

The Jockeys of Norfolk took their name from a line in Richard III, and their Nativity play staged in the style of an old Ealing comedy got them noticed at the 1985 Edinburgh Fringe.

What was Grant's 1982 feature film debut, financed by his university?

Privileged was a student production that also gave first screen roles to Imogen Stubbs and to James Wilby, with whom Grant would later share a major festival acting prize.

Which Andy Warhol portrait did Hugh Grant sell at a huge profit in 2007?

Liz, a portrait of Elizabeth Taylor, was bought for him at auction in 2001 for about $3.5 million and sold six years later for several times that; he is reported to have said he was drunk when he ordered the bid.

Grant attended which Hammersmith school on a scholarship?

Latymer Upper was then a direct grant grammar school, taking state-funded pupils such as scholarship boy Grant beside fee-payers; it became a fully independent school when that system was abolished in the 1970s.

Grant represented his school on which quiz show?

Top of the Form set teams of four pupils from rival secondary schools against each other; its television run had ended in 1975, so Grant's team competed on the radio version.

Grant joined which theatre company for a year to earn his Equity card?

Nottingham Playhouse gave him a year of small parts and the actors' union card he lacked; without one he had just had to pass up a supporting role in The Bounty.

Who directed Grant in the 1988 horror film The Lair of the White Worm?

Ken Russell loosely adapted it from a Bram Stoker novel, casting Grant as a lord of the manor whose ancestor is said to have slain the worm and who now has to face it himself.

On whose talk show did Hugh Grant first face the public after his 1995 arrest, saying "I did a bad thing"?

Jay Leno had booked him earlier to promote a new film; Grant kept the date instead of cancelling and offered no excuses for what he had done.