Hugh Grant Recalls Role That Saved His Career & Roles He “Turned Down”
deadline.comHugh 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.
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