The one movie that traumatised Hugh Grant: “I’ve been in counselling ever since”
Nobody could have predicted that what the Hollywood rom-com was desperately crying out for in the 1990s was a distinctly English form of foppish cad, but it was a niche that Hugh Grant was more than happy to step into.
Four Weddings and a Funeral laid down the template that would make him an international star, with the actor going on to play various offshoots of the same archetype in the likes of Sense and Sensibility, Two Weeks Notice, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Mickey Blue Eyes, Love Actually, and About a Boy, to name just a small few of the very familiar hits Grant was keen to keep playing on repeat.
When he aged out of those roles, he was placed at a pivotal moment in his career. Shorn of the very opportunities that made him a household name, Grant decided to embark on the next phase of his career by playing as many oddballs and weirdos as humanly possible. It was a second wind nobody saw coming, but it’s hard to say it hasn’t worked.
The multiple parts he played in the ambitious Cloud Atlas, the scenery-chewing Phoenix Buchanan in Paddington 2, his entrance into Guy Ritchie’s repertory with The Gentlemen and Operation Fortune: Russe de Guerre, a hammy villainous turn in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, digitising himself as an Oompa-Loompa in Wonka, and donning a Tony the Tiger costume for Jerry Seinfeld’s Unfrosted has seen Grant embrace his eccentric era with aplomb.
One thing that had been sorely missing from his filmography for over 30 years was a horror flick, and given his new direction, it felt like it was just a matter of time before he checked that box. Ken Russell’s absurd The Lair of the White Worm and gothic terror Night Train to Venice are the only such films he’d ever been in, the most recent of which was released in 1993.
Sinking his teeth into the sinister Mr Reed in Bryan Woods and Scott Beck’s psychological nightmare Heretic was a smart move after the movie recouped its budget more than four times over at the box office and landed him on the Golden Globes shortlist for ‘Best Actor – Musical or Comedy’.
A return to horror had been a long time coming, but why did it take him so long? According to Grant, the explanation is simple. “They’re too frightening for me,” he admitted to the Associated Press. “I watched The Exorcist when I was too young, and I’ve been in counselling ever since. I watched one by mistake recently, which was Midsommar. I thought it looked like a jolly Swedish comedy.”
Being exposed to William Friedkin’s seminal chiller as a child put Grant off the genre for life unless there’s a meaty enough part for him to tackle that can convince him to leave his fears at the door. Heretic showed he can be hugely effective as a creep, and it’s an avenue well worth exploring again.
