Hugh Grant has named the film he credits with changing the course of his career after a devastating flop.
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the actor was best known for his roles in romantic comedies, includingNotting Hill, Bridget Jones’s Diary and Four Weddings and a Funeral, a role he said left people “repelled” by him.
But in more recent years, Grant, 64, has been playing against what became his established type, accepting roles as villains in films ranging from Paddington 2 to new horror film Heretic, which is receiving acclaim.
Grant has reflected on this change in his career, revealing that it came after experiencing a box office flop with 2009 film Did You Hear About the Morgans? co-starring Sarah Jessica Parker.
After this, Grant says he was “completely marooned”, adding that the film Cloud Atlas saved his career from nosediving.
The actor played six roles in the adaptation of David Mitchell’s 2004 novel Cloud Atlas, which was directed by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer.
Grant told Vanity Fair: “The Wachowskis offered me just a few small little parts in Cloud Atlas, and to be honest, I was probably only offered that because some of their international distributors had said, ‘We need some more recognisable names. Cram someone recognisable in here.’ They would’ve thought, ‘Oh, we don’t really want Hugh Grant, but we’ll give him some tiny parts.’ They will deny that but I think it’s partly what happened.”
Speaking about accepting the roles in the film spanning centuries, Grant continued: “I thought, ‘Oh yeah, I used to really enjoy doing characters – in fact, I almost used to enjoy acting.’ I started out doing silly voices, odd people, making people laugh at university, and then doing this comedy show in London. It was doing characters.
“Then through sheer chance, maybe because of the way I looked, I got drawn into the leading romantic hero. It went fine, but it’s not what I think I’m best at – partly because it’s less fun.”
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As a consequence of being in Cloud Atlas, Grant said his career has “completely changed”. He also revealed he has “turned down a few [films] that I thought were insufficient in quality or independence allowed to the filmmakers”.
He added: “You felt like a big corporation [was] breathing down the neck of these filmmakers, and I don’t want to make that decision.”