Hugh Grant is worried about the state of making movies. His complaints aren’t so much about the final products themselves, but the culture around them. His latest movie is a hit, but he’s looking for more than good business results out of his moviemaking experience.
The Love Actually actor thinks there’s been a cultural shift on movie sets. Actors don’t develop the same camaraderie they once did, nor the same romances According to Grant, there is a very simple habit to blame for this change.
Hugh Grant is a seasoned leading man
Grant would know if there has been a cultural shift on movie sets. The 62-year-old actor has been working in film since the 1982 whodunit Privileged. That Oxford University-funded film landed him offers, but according to IMDb, he needed stage acting experience to legally take further film work in the United Kingdom.
From there, he worked in a variety of genres from comedies, to dramas, and even horror films. His breakout, the comedy Four Weddings and Funeral in 1994, marked a drastic shift in his career. He became a leading man, an international heartthrob, and was inundated with offers for romantic comedies.
Throughout that time, he regularly fell in and out of love with his various co-stars and film collaborators. Among others, he had long-term relationships with actors Imogen Stubbs and Elizabeth Hurley. He also dated writer Jemima Khan, and eventually married producer Anna Eberstein in 2018.
The cultural change on movie sets that is getting under Hugh Grant’s skin
Perhaps part of the reason Grant finally settled down for good was that he finds movie sets to be much more boring than they used to be. In his more recent work, he finds himself unable to connect with his fellow actors like he used to. And his reasoning is interesting: by having so many options to fill the time, the creative ways actors would turn boredom into human connection have vanished.
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“You know, in the old days, by the end of the second week you were all getting drunk in the evening, and having dinner, and falling in love,” the actor explained to Stephen Colbert in an interview posted to the Late Show YouTube channel. “All that stopped because of telephones. Everyone goes home and looks at Twitter. It’s so sad.”
The Florence Foster Jenkins actor bolstered his case by pointing to a subset of movie productions that play out the old way. “You know, [Quentin] Tarantino bans telephones from his set. And quite right, too! The people there, yeah, they all do shag each other,” he said with a smile.
Hugh Grant’s latest project is proving to be a surprise success
Grant’s latest project, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was, unfortunately, not directed by Tarantino. The swashbuckling fantasy adventure may have been filmed with actors wasting their time on smartphones instead of falling in love. But on the plus side, it’s getting strong reviews from critics, including our own Jeff Nelson.
It also managed to unseat the hugely successful John Wick: Chapter 4 at the top of the box office. The Chris Pine-led picture is the latest in a streak of non-superhero genre blockbusters to make a big impact, Rotten Tomatoes reports. After Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania underperformed and Shazam: Fury of the Gods bombed outright, Dungeons & Dragons wasn’t a sure thing.
Strong word of mouth from early critics screenings and the first day of wide release put the charming fantasy epic over the top. Grant, who plays the devious rogue Forge Fitzwilliam, bet on the right franchise horse this time around. Let’s just hope that whatever project he takes this momentum towards has a no-smartphones policy in place.
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