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He is a British actor and film producer who has established himself as a skilled actor with a satirical comic talent. He is known for his timed dialogues with a touch of sarcasm and facial expressions. Here are some interesting facts about him.
- The charming British actor/producer Hugh Grant was born, as Hugh John Mungo Grant, on September 9, 1960, at Charring Cross Hospital in Hammersmith, London.
- Grant is the second son of Captain James Murray Grant and Fynvola Susan MacLean.
- Grant’s mother was a schoolteacher and taught music, French and Latin for more than 30 years in west London. His father served with the Seaforth Highlanders for eight years in Germany, Scotland and Malaya, and also ran a carpet firm.
- Grant’s grandfather was, Major James Murray Grant, DSO decorated for his bravery and leadership at Saint-Valery-en-Caux during World War II.
- Grant speaks fluent French though his ancestry is mainly Scottish and English, with distant Irish, Welsh, Dutch, and Cornish roots, and remote Belgian (Walloon) and French.
- Grant credits his mother for his accent and for "any acting genes that he might have." She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and 18 months later she passed away at the age of 65.
- Both his parents were from military families and he spent his childhood summers in Scotland, shooting and hunting, with his grandfather.
- Grant's elder brother, James "Jamie" Grant, is a successful banker as managing director, Head of Healthcare, Consumer, & Retail Investment Banking Coverage, at JPMorgan Chase in New York.
- Hugh Grant is a second cousin, once removed, of his Love Actually (2003) co-star Thomas Brodie-Sangster. Hugh's maternal grandmother, Margaret Isabel Randolph, was the sister of one of Thomas's maternal great-grandmothers, Barbara May Randolph.
- Grant’s education began at Hogarth Primary School in Chiswick, then moved to St Peter's Primary School in Hammersmith, to the all boys Wetherby School, attended on a scholarship, the independent Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith and played cricket, 1st XV rugby and football during 1969 to 1978. Grant used to play in a cricket team called 'Captain Scott'.
- Apart from cricket and soccer Grant can also play tennis and snooker but is often described as a "golfing addict".
- Grant is a long time loyal fan of, a Craven Cottage based, Fulham Football Club (English Premier League soccer club) of England.
- As a teenager Grant had a skating accident and due to this a part of the bone in his elbow is still detached from the other bones and "swims" freely between the skin and his elbow.
- Grant rode on the Galsworthy scholarship to New College, Oxford, in 1979, studied English literature and graduated with 2:1 honours in 1982.
- At Oxford Grant joined the exclusive Piers Gaveston Society, a dining club founded in 1977 with membership limited to 12 undergraduates, a group with a reputation for indulging in bizarre entertainments and sexual excess. The words often linked with the society are debauchery and decadence.
- While still a student, in 1982, Grant made his big screen debut as Hugie Grant in Privileged (1982) by director Michael Hoffman.
- Grant gave up his offer from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London to pursue a PhD in the history of art, as he failed to secure a grant.
- Instead viewed acting as nothing more than a creative outlet and joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society to star in a successful touring production of Twelfth Night along with a fellow student Peter Kosminsky.
- Before foraying into acting Grant dabbled with a variety of jobs like writing book reviews, tried tutoring, working as assistant groundsman at Fulham Football Club, and wrote comedy sketches for TV shows, was hired to write and produce radio commercials for products such as Mighty White bread and Red Stripe lager by Talkback Productions.
- Grant joined the Nottingham Playhouse, a regional theatre, and lived for a year at Park Terrace in The Park Estate, Nottingham, to obtain his Equity card, before pursuing a career in theater.
- Grant formed along with his friends Andy Taylor and Chris Lang created his own comedy revue called The Jockeys of Norfolk.
- The Jockeys of Norfolk group toured London's pub comedy circuit, starting on a low note, eventually gained success at the Edinburgh Festival and gained them a spot on the BBC2 TV show called Edinburgh Nights.
- Grant also appeared in theatre productions of plays such as Coriolanus, Lady Windermere's Fan, and An Inspector Calls.
- Grant’s early works went unnoticed until his lead performance as a sexually conflicted in Edwardian drama in James Ivory and Ismail Merchant's Maurice, which won him a Best Actor award at the Venice Film Festival.
- Grant balanced small roles on television with rare film work, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, which included a supporting role opposite Anthony Hopkins and Jean Simmons in The Dawning (1988), and a turn as Lord Byron in a Goya Award-winning Spanish production called Remando al viento (1988).
- Grant, while playing Lord Byron in the Spanish production Remando Al Viento (1988), met actress Elizabeth Hurley, who portrayed Byron's former lover Claire Clairmont and begun dating her till 2000.
- Grant showcased versatility by portraying different characters as in Ken Russell's horror film, The Lair of the White Worm (1988), a gay son in ABC’s television film Our Sons (1991), Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic era Frédéric Chopin Impromptu (1991), a fastidious and sexual hedonism enticed British tourist in Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon (1992), Merchant-Ivory drama The Remains of the Day (1993).
- Grant portrayed a few real life figures during his early career such as, Charles Heidsieck and as Hugh Cholmondeley, in Champagne Charlie and BAFTA Award-nominated White Mischief, respectively.
- Grant referred to his these films as "Europuddings, where you would have a French script, a Spanish director, and English actors. The script would usually be written by a foreigner, badly translated into English. And then they'd get English actors in, because they thought that was the way to sell it to America" and called this phase of his career "hilarious."
- At 32, when Grant was at the brink of giving up his acting career, his breakthrough came as the lead Charles, a bohemian and debonair bachelor, opposite Andie MacDowell, in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) a role which won him a BAFTA Film Award for Best Actor as well as a Golden Globe Award.
- Grant opted out of a nude scene in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994).
- Since then Grant has been stereotyped to play a charming lead in romantic comedies, with his trademark posh English accent, floppy hair and hallmark stuttering for the past two decades
- In October 1994, became the director and founder of the UK-based production company Simian Films Limited.
- Grant’s then girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley, who was the head of the development of the company, had given the name for the company and said it was because Grant resembled an ape or a monkey.
- He was chosen #43 by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history in 1995.
- Just before the release of his US debut film ”Nine Months,” Hugh Grant was arrested for engaging in a lewd act in a parked car with Hollywood prostitute Divine Brown. Grant did not attend the court and was ordered to pay a fine of $1000 and go on an Aids education programme.
- Featured in the 1996 paperback "Mug Shots" that includes many other celebrities who've been arrested for one reason or another.
- Grant apologized for his act in an interview on NBC’s primetime Tonight Show with host Jay Leno. The British actor stuttered and fidgeted before asking viewers for forgiveness, saying: “I’ve done an abominable thing, and she’s [Liz Hurley] been amazing about it, and contrary to what I read in the paper today, she’s been very supportive, and we’re going to try to work it out.’’
- Grant to his credit worked in few successful films on different genres in 1995 portraying, as a cartographer in 1917 Wales in “The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain,” as a painter in “Restoration”, as an intelligent yet reserved young man in Ang Lee’s adaptation of Jane Austen's “Sense and Sensibility,” as a sleazy, eccentric stage director in “An Awfully Big Adventure” and as a child psychologist in “Nine Months.”
- Grant’s debut as a film producer was with the thriller “Extreme Measures” (1996), based on Michael Palmer's novel of the same name, and was a commercial and critical failure.
- After a three year hiatus Grant paired with Julia Roberts in British romantic comedy film set in Notting Hill, London, “Notting Hill” (1999), revived his career.
- Grant separated from Liz Hurley, on May 2000, on amicable terms after being together for 13 years. He is godfather to her son Damian, born in 2002 and Elizabeth Hurley is the godmother of Grant’s daughter Tabitha born in 2011.
- Hugh Grant has appeared on the cover of GQ magazine three times: December '94, October '98 and November '02.
- Voted fourth in the Orange 2001 Film Survey of Greatest British film actors.
- Grant’s production company The Simian Films closed its US office in 2002 and Grant resigned as director in December 2005.
- In 2001, Grant purchased an Andy Warhol painting of Elizabeth Taylor, christened “Liz (Colored Liz),” in an auction organized by Sotheby’s of New York City, for just under $4 million and later auctioned off it in 2007 for $23.5 million.
- Hugh Grant has had few long-term relationships (Liz Hurley [1986-2000], Jemima Khan [2004-2007]) but has never been married.
- Though a consummate bachelor, Grant has fathered 3 (a girl and 2 boys) children by 2 different girl friends.
- At the age of 51, Grant became a father for the first time, on 26 September 2011, when his ex-girlfriend Tinglan Hong gave birth to their daughter Tabitha Grant.
- His boys were born few months apart, a son born to Swedish television producer Anna Eberstein on September 2012 and son Felix Chang Grant on 16 February 2013 born to ex-girlfriend Tinglan Hong.
