Hugh Grant

Hugh John Mungo Grant, born on 9 September 1960, is an English actor. He initially established himself as a charming romantic leading man before transitioning into a character actor. Over his career, his films have grossed over US$4 billion worldwide. Grant has received several accolades, including a British Academy Film Award, a Golden Globe Award, and an Honorary César in 2006, along with nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2022, Time Out magazine recognized him as one of Britain's 50 greatest actors of all time.

Grant was born in Hammersmith Hospital to Fynvola Susan MacLean, a state schoolteacher, and Captain James Murray Grant, a former officer in the Seaforth Highlanders who ran a carpet business. Raised in west London, Grant attended several schools, including Latymer Upper School on a scholarship. In 1979, he won a scholarship to read English literature at New College, Oxford. While at Oxford, he joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society and made his feature film acting debut in Privileged (1982).

After university, Grant performed in regional theatre to secure an Equity card and created a sketch-comedy group called The Jockeys of Norfolk, which succeeded at the 1985 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He gained early critical recognition for his first leading film role in the drama Maurice (1987), sharing the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, Grant balanced television work with film roles in period dramas such as The Remains of the Day (1993) and Sense and Sensibility (1995).

Grant achieved international stardom in the 1994 romantic comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral, which became a major global box-office success and earned him a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA Award for Best Actor. He went on to star in a series of popular romantic comedies, including Notting Hill (1999), Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) and its sequels, About a Boy (2002), Two Weeks Notice (2002), Love Actually (2003), and Music and Lyrics (2007). In the 1990s, he also established the production company Simian Films Limited.

In later years, Grant shifted toward character roles, receiving acclaim for playing against type. He earned BAFTA Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayals of St. Clair Bayfield in Florence Foster Jenkins (2016) and an actor in Paddington 2 (2017). His subsequent film credits include Cloud Atlas (2012), The Gentlemen (2019), Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023), Wonka (2023), and the horror film Heretic (2024), which brought him another BAFTA nomination.

On television, Grant earned Primetime Emmy Award nominations for playing politician Jeremy Thorpe in the BBC miniseries A Very English Scandal (2018) and a accused murderer in the HBO miniseries The Undoing (2020). Outside of his acting work, Grant has expressed hostility toward the media and celebrity culture, and he emerged as a prominent critic of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation during the News International phone hacking scandal.