The day Hugh Grant tried to make friends with the mafia: “They weren’t particularly interested in me”
Sometimes, to make great art, you have to take risks, though sometimes, it can also be a forgettable crime-themed rom-com featuring Hugh Grant as a bumbling British auctioneer who gets himself caught up in the mafia.
Mickey Blue Eyes, released in 1999, saw Grant star alongside the likes of Jeanne Tripplehorn and The Godfather’s own James Caan, Mr Sonny Corleone himself, and while it had the potential to be a big success, what with its strong cast and compelling plotline, it wasn’t. The movie wasn’t a complete flop, but it’s hardly Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’s Diary or Four Weddings and a Funeral.
It made $54million, so it could’ve done better, but it could’ve done a lot worse, too. Really, what’s more interesting than the film itself is the behind-the-scenes trivia, not least the fact that nine actors from the movie went on to star in The Sopranos.
Besides this, what’s fun to learn is that Grant and much of the cast and crew cosied up to the mafia while making the movie. It’s always good to have them on your side, I guess. When you’re portraying something like the mafia in your movie, the last thing you want is for it to come across offensively or unrealistically, so the team behind Mickey Blue Eyes made sure that they were in the mafia’s good books.
After Mike Newell had shot Donnie Brasco, he called up Grant, whom he’d previously directed in Four Weddings and a Funeral, and suggested he get in touch with a certain mafia pal. “Mike called me up, slightly nervously, and said, ‘Hugh, I think you really, really should talk to a very good friend of mine named Rocco. I can’t give you his last name because I don’t actually know it. He’s called Rocco the Butcher, but don’t let that put you off’,” he told Entertainment Weekly.
He continued, “So we talked to Rocco, and he introduced us to a good friend of his, who was called Vinnie Seven Heads”.
To keep everyone happy, it was Elizabeth Hurley, serving as a co-producer on the film, who weaponised her good looks and charm. “Elizabeth did a lot of heavy flirting with them, and they did a lot of heavy flirting with her. I sort of sat off in a corner; they weren’t particularly interested in me,” Grant admitted.
“But Elizabeth, they adored, and she became their princess,” he said, and director Kelly Makin backed up Grant’s claims, revealing that Hurley was “always right beside” some old mafia guy when they’d go out for meals.
It’s hard to imagine Grant, the aggressively British, floppy-haired heartthrob, who you can picture reading the newspaper over a cup of coffee in his slippers, William Thacker style, hanging out with members of an organised crime family. But sometimes a film requires real research and real risks. It’s probably for the best that the mafia didn’t care too much about Grant, and it’s a good job that he didn’t mind his then-partner Hurley getting a little flirty with them (well, that scandal had already happened by then).
He managed to get as close to the mafia as he possibly could while walking away unscathed, although Mickey Blue Eyes wasn’t exactly a masterpiece.
