The GuardianThe Guardian

A new Hugh Grant has emerged – and he is gloriously grumpy

By Stuart Heritage

30 Mar 2023 · 3 min read

Editor's Note

Hugh Grant has given up trying to maintain his pretty-boy leading man image and has chosen instead to let us marvel at the weird crevices of his mind. The Guardian argues this is a good thing.

Has anything been more edifying over recent years than the sight of Hugh Grant inexorably becoming more and more Hugh Grantish? I put it to you that it hasn’t. Witness Grant at the Oscars this month, blurting out a tommy-gun burst of charismatic anti-answers to a bewildered host simply because he didn’t want to engage with her softball line of questioning, for example. It was a moment of forced awkwardness that you simply don’t see any more.

Nor was it a one-off. This week, on Stephen Colbert’s talkshow, Grant launched into another berserk theory that has no real place existing in the modern world: telephones have ruined the film set.

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