Hugh Grant is explaining why he has been skeptical to star in some big-budget fare.
In a Vanity Fair profile published Wednesday, the actor reflected on working more in indies and television and why he rejected a few roles in major Hollywood studio films.
“I’ve turned down a few that I thought were insufficient in quality or independence allowed to the filmmakers — you felt like a big corporation [was] breathing down the neck of these filmmakers, and I don’t want to make that decision,” he said.
As for how he could tell, Grant explained, “I asked them bluntly. I quizzed the directors. You can tell quite early on, since you might have a few ideas about the part before you’ve signed up — you suggest things, and you can tell if there’s a lot of pushback from noncreative executives.”
An exception was the film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves which Grant called “such a good film.” But in regards to the film’s box office — the film came in ahead of expectations at the time but not enough to launch a new film franchise for Paramount and eOne — he said that’s still the “biggest mystery.”
“Why didn’t anyone do market research before?” he said. “I think that’s what went wrong: Basically, people just thought, I don’t want to see a film about this game. Why had no one asked the public?”
As for another notable studio film, Grant is also set to reprise his role as Daniel Cleaver in the fourth Bridget Jones’ film Mad About the Boy. But before signing on, Grant said he originally wasn’t “crazy about” what they had in store for his character in the script. The actor had previously declined starring in 2016’s Bridget Jones’s Baby: “I really couldn’t fit my character in—he just didn’t belong, so I stepped aside.”
However, he connected to the fourth film’s story. “I loved the script — it made me cry, and I wanted to help with this one,” he said. “But really there’s no part for Daniel Cleaver in it at all. They wanted him in it, and in the end, they’d done something I wasn’t crazy about.”
To rectify his dissatisfaction with his part, Grant said he wrote some scenes that the filmmakers liked enough to infuse into the story. “It’s absolutely the best [Bridget Jones book], and I think it’s very funny and very, very moving. I’m not in a lot, I did a week’s work, that’s it…. But when you see the film, you’ll be very moved.”
Grant will appear in the film alongside Renée Zellweger, Emma Thompson, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Leo Woodall.
