Biography - Hugh Grant

Of all the actors who have made careers out of playing the same character over and over, Hugh Grant does it best. No one seems to be tiring of his charming upper-middle-class Englishman routine, and after starring in some of the more memorable romantic comedies of the last decade, it’s not difficult to see why.

Grant’s youth was about what you’d expect from his film roles. Born in London on September 9, 1960, Grant was born into a wealthy family and attended the elite Latymer Upper School in West London. Like many of his peers there, Grant went on to Oxford, attending the New College and joining the Piers Gaveston Society, a student dining club named after King Edward II’s lover. Grant focused in art history while at Oxford, and turned down a spot at the prestigious Courtauld Institute in London for post-graduate studies in the field. By that point he had caught the acting bug, starring in the Michael Hoffman-directed, Oxford-funded film comedy “Privileged”. He soon found success on British television, appearing in a variety of shows and TV movies through the 80s and early 90s.

After appearing in the popular James Ivory adaptation “The Remains of the Day” in 1993, Grant got his big break in “Four Weddings and a Funeral”. Grant lit up the screen alongside Andie MacDowell, and the film’s huge international success made him an overnight star. 1995 saw Grant break out as a Hollywood leading man, starring as his stock character with Julianne Moore in “Nine Months”, with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet in “Sense and Sensibility”, and alongside the all-star cast of Hoffman’s “Restoration”. One of Grant’s most notorious stunts came in the same year with a famous arrest in Los Angeles after getting caught with a prostitute in his car. The embarrassed actor, who had been dating British stunner Elizabeth Hurley for several years, undertook a damage control period in which he publicly apologized for the incident several times.

After 1996’s thriller dud “Extreme Measures”, Grant kept quiet for a few years recovering from his damaged public image. Nonetheless, his return to the screen alongside a red-hot Julia Roberts in 1999’s “Notting Hill” returned him to superstar status. The mega-hit romance put him back at the top of the world’s list of favorite romantic leading men, and his performance as Daniel Cleaver in 2001’s “Bridget Jones’s Diary” made his charm-drenched British stud character into enormously amusing self-parody. As Renée Zellweger’s primary object of lust, Grant was the perfect choice. Since that film’s success he has starred in the terrific Nick Hornby adaptation “About a Boy”, “Two Weeks Notice” with Sandra Bullock, the adorable comedy smash “Love Actually”, “Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason”, and the 2006 box office disaster “American Dreamz”. Later this year he will star alongside Drew Barrymore in the romantic comedy “Music and Lyrics By”.