LOS ANGELES: Interviewing Hugh Grant — the poster boy for a campaign against press intrusion and a notoriously prickly subject when the mood takes him — can be an intimidating experience.
When the actor sits down at a hotel in Beverly Hills to promote his latest movie, “Florence Foster Jenkins,” he looks ill at ease but determined to be on form, politely offering coffee and forcing a smile.
“I’m lovely in some interviews, I’m a little ratty in others. For some reason I’m ratty with those showbiz shows — ‘Extra’ or ‘ET’ — they’re too in my face,” he explains.
Grant, 55, is the most high-profile face of the Hacked Off campaign against criminality and corruption in the British tabloids for the last five years.
But he is something of a paradox — on one hand campaigning to protect ordinary people from the worst excesses of Fleet Street and on the other taking a torch to his own privacy whenever a microphone is shoved before him.
Grant says he was “full of fear” after being cast by director Stephen Frears to star alongside Meryl Streep in “Florence Foster Jenkins,” the moving and hilarious biopic of a tone-deaf wannabe soprano which hits US theaters on Friday.
Having started out in regional theater before touring London’s club circuit with his own comedy revue, Grant claims to have enjoyed treading the boards.
“Not so much in the cinema, to be absolutely honest. I was talking to Kevin Bacon last night at a screening and we agreed you always go home a little sad,” he says.
Hugh Grant admits film acting makes him ‘sad’
Hugh Grant admits film acting makes him ‘sad’
