The legendary director who called Hugh Grant a c*nt: “Do it how I fucking showed you”
Hugh Grant has gone through quite the evolution as an actor. In the beginning, long before he was the pre-eminent floppy-haired rom-com prince of British cinema, he was a humble writer and voice-over artist for radio commercials. He might have stayed in this lane, writing sketches for adverts to put himself through an MPhil, but instead, he was spotted by the right person and put on a glide path towards international stardom.
It’s hard to imagine the rom-com genre of the 1990s without Grant. Who could possibly have performed that bashful, stammering charm that he did so flawlessly in Four Weddings and a Funeral, About a Boy, and, of course, Notting Hill? He and Nora Ephron might be the most crucial factors in the boom of the rom-com around this time, and although she put her New Yorker spin on everything and he was always irrevocably British, it’s enticing to imagine what kind of magic they could have cooked up together.
The schtick got a bit rough around the edges in the 2000s, though, with only a few bright spots of redemption. Grant’s relentless charm and haplessness got a bit tiresome and repetitive along with the genre itself, and it would take years for him to return to form. When he did, it was as a scene-stealing character actor. Florence Foster Jenkins, Paddington 2, and Wonka all demonstrated that his range was squandered during the peak of his career, and he just seems to be getting better with every performance.
While this might have seemed to happen out of the blue, however, Grant’s recent turn towards absurdism is in keeping with his early work. Before his period of rom-com dominance, the actor dabbled in experimental movies as well, including a horror film with the one and only Ken Russell called The Lair of the White Worm in 1988.
Based on a Bram Stoker story that makes Dracula look like a Nicholas Sparks novel, the film is a bewildering fever dream that is directly in keeping with Russell’s most avant-garde work. Grant and Peter Capaldi play demon-slaying bachelors who hunt down an ancient worm (which looks more like a dragon) that has been preying on the scantily clad women folk of the area.
It is completely unhinged and mostly unintelligible, so it makes sense that the actors might not have been entirely clear on what they were supposed to be doing. Russell must have found this extremely irritating, though, because as Grant recounted in a 2009 interview with Elle, the director got a bit sweary when his young star went looking for clarification on his performance.
“Ken Russell said, ‘Forget how it fucking feels, do it how I fucking showed you, you c*nt,'” Grant recalled. The actor clearly listened, because he manages to give a very winning Grant-y performance in a film that is mostly devoid of rhyme or reason.
It’s clear that this movie was one of a kind, and the demands of the role were unique, but according to Grant, Russell wasn’t the only director who got a bit short with him when he asked for guidance. “Richard Curtis told me, ‘Be funnier,'” he said while revealing that Ang Lee, who directed him in Sense and Sensibility, told him to play his scenes like a “bad actor” for some reason.
“My response,” Grant recalled, “Was, ‘I think you already have that one, love’.” He couldn’t have been more wrong.
