Hugh Grant once described his acting range as “sinisterly narrow”. It was an unforgettably perfect phrase, all the more so because it was self-evidently true: over 30 years, Grant has become the embodiment of foppish English discomfort and reticence, presented with an untidy charm and an inimitable Oxbridge accent cut by Savile Row. Little wonder that Americans have been daffy for him ever since Four Weddings and a Funeral: he was everything that “England” was supposed to be. But there has always been an acid touch.
When the actor popped up on the red carpet at Sunday evening’s Oscar ceremony to submit himself to an interview with Ashley Graham, whose job it was to ask the passing stars set-piece questions designed to permit a bout of sincere gushing, it was no surprise to see Grant squirm. He has elevated the fish-out-of-water routine to an art form, but for once the most loquacious man in showbiz seemed genuinely stuck for words as he offered the barest replies to Graham’s upbeat line of industry questioning.
Grant had to fight to convince the producers that he wasn’t ‘hoity-toity, up-my-own-arse posh’. He was, of course, but it came with a disarming smile and a stuttering delivery he made his own
On a night of few Oscar surprises and the usual tsunami of effusive praise and thanks, Grant’s waspish observations always promised to stand apart. But the undiluted awkwardness of the moment quickly overshadowed many of the award presentations. Graham and Grant could not find common ground: it was a deeply uncomfortable visual presentation of what happens when West Coast sunniness meets English acidity and reserve. Many viewers delighted in the Englishman’s scarcely disguised disdain for the peacockery and essential daftness of the entire spectacle. The other half wondered how Graham managed to maintain her poise in the face of Grant’s increasingly clipped replies – “What are you wearing tonight?” “Just my suit” – and at his eye-rolling when she thanked him at the end of the brief encounter.
Responses to the moment split opinion, but the clip offered a tidy package of the caustic approach to it all – Hollywood, the acting game and himself – from which Grant has never strayed. He’s the great survivor of the rush of English actors who seemed to walk straight from the world of Rupert Brooke and into Merchant-Ivory films in the 1980s. Long after the stars of Rupert Everett and Rupert Graves and poor Julian Sands – missing in a snowstorm since hiking in California in January – had faded, Grant emerged as a rare bankable English star who could be relied on to play the romantic or the out-and-out cad as the occasion demanded.
It took a while: it would be fun to have him review, with that unforgiving eye, his straight-man performances in the roles in which he was glaringly miscast – Roman Polanski’s Bitter Moon, or Mickey Blue Eyes. He could do straight, more than holding his own in the tense scene with Anthony Hopkins at the end of The Remains of the Day. For some reason, he always looks ridiculous in period costume and didn’t fit as a sombre leading man.
Grant’s quick turn of phrase returned as he sent himself up next to the radiant Andie MacDowell, with whom he was presenting an Oscar. ‘Still stunning,’ he said about her before gesturing to himself and saying, ‘Basically a scrotum’
It wasn’t until Richard Curtis got over his reservations that Grant was simply too good-looking to play his lead in Four Weddings and a Funeral that the film industry found a way to unleash his particular appeal. Grant had to fight, he later explained, to convince the producers that he wasn’t, as they perceived him to be, “hoity-toity, up-my-own-arse posh”. He was, of course, but the poshness came with a disarming smile, a stuttering delivery he made his own, and a range of very, very nice shirts that seemed to be built into any part he accepted. And for more than 30 years he’s been of the Hollywood establishment without ever being quite in it.
There’s a wonderful little clip of Grant offering frank appraisals of the other stars he has worked with down the years. “A genius ... but not remotely sane,” he says about Emma Thompson. “Hated me,” he says with mock regret of Robert Downey jnr: “We did a thing called Restoration together, and he took one look and me and wanted to kill me.” His rapport with Drew Barrymore mirrored his uncomfortable moment on the Oscars red carpet. “She was very LA and I was a grumpy old Londoner,” he said, cheerfully failing to remember the name of the film in which they starred together.
“He’s giving everyone sh*t the whole time, and he’s a big pain in the ass,” the TV presenter Jon Stewart complained, labelling Grant the worst guest he had on his talkshow – and the Englishman was less fun backstage, carping about the promotional clip used. “What is that clip? It’s a terrible clip,” Stewart recalled him asking, before he replied, “Well, then make a better f***ing movie.”
Grant’s acerbic persona casts him as a peculiar figure in the Hollywood culture of sincerity and deep reflections on performance and acting. “As long as they make them money, they don’t care what you get up to,” he once said of the Hollywood machine. And he has glided through since, continuing to live in England, acting as a strenuous advocate for privacy in the wake of the tabloid phone-hacking scandal, vaguely threatening to leave acting and every so often taking another role in which he is an older version of the boyish, befuddled charmer.
Not long after his awkward two minutes with Ashley Graham, Grant was on stage in the auditorium, presenting an Oscar with Andie MacDowell, his Four Weddings costar. The quick turn of phrase had returned as he sent himself up next to the radiant MacDowell, whom he claimed had been using a good moisturiser for the past 29 years. “I’ve never used one in my life. Still stunning,” he said, pointing at MacDowell. Then he gestured to himself and said, “Basically a scrotum”.
It brought one of the few instances of genuine laughter from the evening, because the stars, the beautiful people, do not speak this way about themselves. And because Grant is funny.
The actor is 62 now, and he has had five children since he was 50: life is busy. His media engagements are limited to promotional fare, and he delivers the goods: arch, self-deprecating, usually good for a killer line or two. But he has remained above the fray and basically unknowable. Somewhere within him lurks perhaps the best English talkshow presenter of all time: he would be a combination of David Frost and Kenneth Tynan.
Of course, they could never pay him enough. It would be no surprise were he simply to retreat from the acting game without fanfare. There might yet be a truly memorable role awaiting him in which he gets to play against type. He might yet sit down and write a classic memoir in the spirit of David Lean’s or Rupert Everett’s. He may even remember that moment at the Oscars one year and concede, ruefully, stutteringly, that he, er, yes, he was, regrettably, and there is no way around this, a complete arse. But what’s a chap to do?
