Hugh Grant is crediting the Wachowskis with reviving his career.
The Golden Globe winner reflected on playing six roles in the sibling filmmakers’ 2012 feature adaptation of Cloud Atlas after his 2009 comedy Did You Hear About the Morgans? with Sarah Jessica Parker failed to perform.
“I was completely marooned,” Grant recalled to Vanity Fair. “The Wachowskis offered me just a few small little parts in Cloud Atlas, and to be honest, I was probably only offered that because some of their international distributors had said, ‘We need some more recognizable names. Cram someone recognizable in here.’ They would’ve thought, ‘Oh, we don’t really want Hugh Grant, but we’ll give him some tiny parts.’ They will deny that but I think it’s partly what happened.”
Based on the 2004 novel by David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas follows six epic interwoven tales spanning from 1849 to 2321. Each story offered Grant a juicy antagonistic character to sink his teeth into — albeit the film received backlash for featuring Grant and several other white actors portraying East Asian characters during one timeline.
“I thought, Oh yeah, I used to really enjoy doing characters—in fact, I almost used to enjoy acting,” he explained. “I started out doing silly voices, odd people, making people laugh at university, and then doing this comedy show in London. It was doing characters. Then through sheer chance, maybe because of the way I looked, I got drawn into the leading romantic hero. It went fine, but it’s not what I think I’m best at—partly because it’s less fun.”
Hugh Grant in Cloud Atlas (2012). (Jay Maidment/Warner Bros. Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection)
Grant said his career has since “completely changed” as he’s gone from the romantic lead to playing the villain more often these days. “On a big screen, over 90 minutes, unless there’s a sense of the quivering jelly—the damaged bit inside—it’s going to be boring and just be a mustache-twirling baddie. You’ve got to get to the jelly,” he explained.
The Heretic actor also opened up about some of the roles he didn’t take and how he determines which directors he wants to work with. “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.”
Explaining how he can tell the difference, Grant noted, “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.”