Hugh Grant (London, 64 years old) is not opposed. And even less when he talks about himself. “What happens to you is that you have an image of me based on the characters in Richard Curtis’ films and I am not like that. In reality, that charming Englishman is a self-portrait of Richard,” says the actor with a smile from ear to ear, which at the same time chills the blood. Curtis, one of his best friends, and to whom Grant presented an honorary Oscar last Monday, is the screenwriter and/or director of Four weddings and a funeral, Notting Hill y Love Actually. “That Hugh is actually Richard.”
Now, the freezing smile… The actor has made enormous use of that smile in Heretic, his first step into horror cinema, a film that premieres in Spain on January 3 and in which he plays a kind guy who accepts the visit and indoctrinating speech of two young Mormon missionaries in his home… who will soon They will discover that this expert in theology and philosophy who wants to confront his beliefs—the heretic of the title—is actually a predator who is playing with two more victims that he is about to devour. Although before reaching Heretic, Grant responds to the previous question: “I feel much closer, I look more like the characters in the saga of Bridget Jones or of A big boy.” With him you never know if he answers seriously or ironically, and of course, the myth of the great Hugh Grant, of the actor who is difficult to portray, is not going to collapse in an interview in Spain.
When he was a child, Grant and his brother, a banker now living in New York, went to church “every Sunday.” “My father dragged us to the Anglican church. Until one day, when I was 12, we rebelled and told him: ‘That’s it.’ And he looked at my mother and said: ‘Well, the boys are right.’ He asked us for the books we had by Richard Dawkins (biologist, popularizer and great debater), and became an atheist. And for years, he was sending copies as gifts to my very pious aunts.” to enjoy HereticDoes it matter to have religious beliefs or does it not matter? “No, for God’s sake, you just have to watch it for fun. It is not a film of evangelical racism.” That said, it’s difficult to know if he responds or makes jokes to see which one sticks.
Over the years, Grant’s career has opened up: from shy men who stutter at sentimental crossroads, he has gone on to play all kinds of politicians, gangsters, criminals, real historical figures… Is he the perfect actor to play any Englishman? ? “I carry the imprint of that Englishman that Richard imbued in my career 25 years ago,” he insists as a defender. More seriously, he defends his friend: “Richard is a man who believes that the world can be a better place, and that is why when he writes he thinks a lot about whether it is worth writing another drama with murders (smiles).” And don’t you sometimes miss in your daily life that a talent like Richard whispers great phrases to you to use? “Don’t worry, I already know how to whisper my lines by myself.”
Grant, he says, has developed a much longer character creation process over time. “I have become more thorough. I put in more and more hours for more and more weeks. And I have discovered that the better I prepare it, the better it turns out. I analyze what my character says, how he says it. In Heretic, From my Mr. Reed I asked myself: was he born like this, with evil DNA? Or did his mother hit him? What happened at university? Did they fire you as a teacher? Had he already kidnapped students? Boys, girls? All of this provides a richness that the public does not have to know, but they will surely feel it,” he says. And Grant, he emphasizes, is happy with his method and his career. “There are a lot of actors who, especially when they are successful, open their own production companies and buy books to adapt or look for scripts so they can show off with them… I’m not like that at all. “I actually read the script and think if I’m going to have fun, and that’s it.”
Heretic illustrates a terrifying world, in which no one is free from being attacked, where fears can enter through the door of your house or wait inside for visitors. “However, the world today,” the actor reflects, “is it more terrible than that of 20, 50 or 100 years ago? Or is it a fear stoked by the algorithm?” At that moment, the performer, in a tight blue suit, white shirt and snowy, almost translucent skin, like only the other great Englishman of cinema, Colin Firth, has, drums his fingers on his knees and shrugs his shoulders.
More than three decades ago, Grant already played another predator, with as much charm although much younger: he was Lord Byron in Rowing into the wind, by Gonzalo Suárez. “I have some wonderful memories,” he smiles. And for the first time, he launches: “The budget was really very low. Yesterday (Thursday) I was looking for the place where we stayed. I know it was close to here (the actor sleeps in 2024 in a luxury hotel in the Alonso Martínez area of Madrid). It was called Apartamentos Recoletos, after Colon, could it be?” Could be. “I remember perfectly that everything in them was brown. Really, everything. And we went rowing on Lake Retiro… The director didn’t know English, and on the other hand, almost all of the cast came from the United Kingdom. So they hired a great, bilingual translator. I came from a university, I don’t know, and that’s why I didn’t know anything about cinema or acting. And without any tact. In short, he would come up to you and say things like ‘Gonzalo says you’re a moron.’ And Grant melodramatically drops his head on the table like dead weight.”
Are you worried about the passage of time? Do you let yourself be carried away by melancholy? “Bah, no. I lead a very pleasant life. I only get upset when my phone creates one of those musical montages with photos from years ago and you think: ‘Come on, look, how happy I was there.’ Do you know what I miss? “When the internet didn’t exist.” He bursts out laughing, and looks straight into the eyes of the interlocutor, perhaps because his most complicated moments in his private life, including his arrest in Los Angeles with a prostitute in a car, occurred before digital omnipresence. “Every day I am more convinced that the Internet has destroyed us, that that world was better.”