Hugh Grant thinks people were "repelled" by his public persona in the 1990s.
Hugh Grant admits his public persona was a mistake
The 64-year-old actor's breakthrough role came in Richard Curtis' 1994 film 'Four Weddings And A Funeral', and after finding success as the flustered heartthrob in other rom-coms like 'Notting Hill', 'Love Actually' and 'Music and Lyrics', he started to adopt the character in real life.
He told Vanity Fair magazine: "People quite rightly were repelled by it in the end.”
While he became typecast for a while, Hugh admitted the parts were "actually character roles" because they are a world away from the real man.
He explained: “The irony of the Richard Curtis parts I played is that they were actually character roles for me — I’m not that stutter-y, blink-y guy.
"The catastrophic mistake I made was that because 'Four Weddings' was such a gigantic success, I thought, 'Oh well, this is the way of infinite wealth and success. People are eating up that person.'"
From there, Hugh decided to adopt the persona at award shows and in interviews, but described himself as a "d***".
He added: "So I did him in real life: I started doing interviews [as him].
"In my Golden Globe acceptance speech from 1995, I said, ‘I love you, gosh, blah blah. Thank you so much’ — what a d***.
"I’m playing the character because I thought everyone was eating him up. It was never me at all.”
Being in 'Cloud Atlas' reminding him of his love for acting, and he was able to go back to his roots with more interesting projects.
He said: “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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