If you’re a fan of rom-coms ― especially British ones ― chances are some of your favourite flicks involve Hugh Grant.
The star is such an iconic ’90s and ’00s heartthrob, it’s hard to imagine the defining films of that era without him.
But filmmaker Richard Curtis – who worked with Hugh on Bridget Jones’ Diary, Notting Hill, Four Weddings And A Funeral and Love Actually – has admitted he almost didn’t cast the star in the actor’s breakout 1994 flick.
Speaking at the Montclair Film Festival in 2016, Richard explained that Hugh nearly didn’t get the role of Charles in Four Weddings And A Funeral for a pretty flattering reason.
“When we were auditioning Four Weddings And A Funeral, we couldn’t find anyone to play Charles, and I didn’t want Hugh Grant to audition,” Richard said at the time.
“I thought he was too handsome, and I thought it would ruin the film to have a guy that handsome who wouldn’t have a girlfriend,” he added.
Still, Hugh’s on-set actions apparently made up for the terrible sin of his great looks.
“He came in and it was like the difference between night and day,” Richard said. “He did every single line absolutely perfectly and we just had to accept the fact that he was moderately good looking.”
For his part, Hugh himself didn’t seem confident in the career-defining movie at the time.
He told IndieWire in 2023: “We were all sure we’d made a giant turkey till the film had its first previews. I was clearly wrong and the film changed my life.”
Years earlier, he told Deadline he thought the film was so bad that he cried in a cab after watching it for the first time.
“Rowan [Atkinson] was funny, the rest of it was just awful and I had to be helped sobbing back onto the set… Then they had a screening in Santa Monica and suddenly everyone loved it. It was a total surprise to everyone,” he said.
The film ended up making $245.7 million on a $4.4 million budget ― to nobody’s surprise (except maybe Richard Curtis’) audiences did not find Hugh’s handsomeness to be a problem.
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