Category Archives: Hugh Grant

Private investigator tells phone-hacking trial of threat to ‘destroy’ him

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Paul Hawkes says claims that he hacked Hugh Grant’s emails on behalf of Daily Mirror are ‘fantastical'

Press reform campaigners threatened to “destroy” a private investigator because he refused to help their campaign against newspaper groups, it has been alleged at the high court.

Paul Hawkes, a veteran private investigator, said claims that he hacked Hugh Grant’s emails on behalf of the Daily Mirror were “fantastical” and “made-up”. After being presented with a supposed invoice for the work, Hawkes mocked the idea he would have carried out such a serious act for such a small sum, telling the court: “You’re saying I got it hacked by a third party for £150? Come on!”

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Daily Mail seeks to delay court allegations of high-profile breaches of privacy

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Lawyers for group including Prince Harry, Doreen Lawrence and Elton John filed claims two months ago

The Daily Mail has sought to delay the publication of potentially damaging court allegations about its journalism made by Prince Harry, Doreen Lawrence, Elton John and others.

Lawyers acting for the group of high-profile individuals claim they have “compelling and highly distressing evidence” they have been the “victims of abhorrent criminal activity and gross breaches of privacy” by Associated Newspapers over many years.

The hiring of private investigators to secretly place listening devices inside people’s cars and homes.

The commissioning of individuals to surreptitiously listen in to, and record, people’s live, private telephone calls while they were taking place.

The payment of police officials, with allegedly corrupt links to private investigators, for sensitive inside information.

The impersonation of individuals to obtain medical information from private hospitals, clinics, and treatment centres by deception.

The accessing of bank accounts, credit histories and financial transactions through illicit means and manipulation.

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Hugh Grant brings phone-hacking claim against the Sun

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Ten years after settling case against News of the World, actor now taking action against another Rupert Murdoch title

Hugh Grant is leading a renewed attempt to prove phone hacking took place at the Sun, even as Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper continues to maintain no illegality took place there.

The actor has followed Paul Gascoigne and Sienna Miller in bringing a so-called “Sun-only” phone-hacking claim, specifically alleging that illegality took place at the daily tabloid in the 2000s. Rebekah Brooks, the current chief executive of Murdoch’s News UK business, was editor of the Sun during the period in question.

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Too hot for the plot: could a modelling job save Jamie Dornan’s character in Belfast?

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In Kenneth Branagh’s acclaimed drama, Dornan plays a penniless father whose astonishing good looks pass without comment. It’s not the first time the film industry has asked audiences to ignore an actor’s attractiveness

Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast clearly owes a debt to Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma. Both films are named after places. They’re both autobiographical. They’re both filmed in black and white for maximum awards season impact. And yet the films differ in one key area. Cuarón, for the most part, filled his film with authentic-looking non-actors. Branagh, meanwhile, filled his with Jamie Dornan.

Which is no slight on Dornan. In recent years he’s proved himself to be one of our most charismatic and magnetic actors. Put a camera on Jamie Dornan and audiences won’t look away. Except in Belfast, he’s playing the down-at-heel dad of a family barely able to stay afloat. At one point he is almost sunk by a £500 tax bill. Which would be all too believable, save for the fact that Jamie Dornan looks like Jamie Dornan. If Belfast was set in any recognisable universe, then one of Dornan’s neighbours would have said, “Have you ever thought about becoming a model?”, or “I saw you singing Everlasting Love to professional standards in the club the other night, you could try doing that for a living”, or “You know what would get you out of this pickle? Playing a literal sex god in the movie adaptations of a wildly successful erotic novel series?” And he would have said yes and, because he is Jamie Dornan, all his debts would have been paid off by lunchtime.

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Richard Curtis on Four Weddings: ‘I don’t know how fully I thought through Andie MacDowell’s character’

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The film has topped a poll for the most rewatchable film. Its director, Mike Newell, sees why. So why would Curtis, who wrote the script, rather rewatch Elf?

Richard Curtis rarely rewatches Four Weddings and a Funeral. “There isn’t a natural circumstance where I say: ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do for the next two hours, see one of my films.’” Partly, it is knowing the punchlines. Partly, it is being a bit busy. On the wall of Curtis’s Notting Hill home office (stucco fireplace, neon art, whopping clock), just out of frame of his laptop camera, are six Post-it reminders of pre-Christmas tasks. Wrap presents? Make pud? Nope: rewrite a film, cast an online panto, appoint a new CEO for Comic Relief. Et cetera.

Anyway, for those of us a bit less pressed, things are different. Four Weddings – in which Hugh Grant’s stuttering bachelor, in a series of morning suits, woos Andie MacDowell – was the runaway winner in a new, slightly strange poll to find Britain’s most rewatchable movie. In a list of 50 films co-curated by the British Film Institute and Google Pixel, the tale of Charles and Carrie took 49% of the votes, with Skyfall on 37% and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on 33%.

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Hugh Grant’s Undoing: how romcom leading men embraced the dark side

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No more Mr Nice Guys! With his role in the HBO miniseries, Grant – like Richard Gere and Vince Vaughn – has swapped charm for smarm, reflecting a changing society

Hugh Grant made his name in the 90s as a squeaky-clean charmer, but anyone who has been keeping tabs on his career will not have been surprised to see him show up in the HBO miniseries The Undoing as an unhinged philanderer, attacking a man with his bare teeth in a prison-yard brawl. For a while now, the actor who used to warm our hearts has been doing his best to chill our blood. And he has been doing it pretty well: as a scheming politician in A Very English Scandal, as a scheming investigator in The Gentlemen and, best of all, as a scheming theatre impresario in Paddington 2. As mid-career renewals go, Grant’s has been one of the best and The Undoing, six hours of top-notch trash that wraps up tonight, has made the most of its newly depraved star.

The reinvention of the romantic lead is hardly a new phenomenon – it is more than 75 years since Murder, My Sweet turned Dick Powell from a fresh-faced musical star to a whisky-addled noir antihero, but in recent years it has become an especially popular trope. Richard Gere, who, like Grant, found screen stardom by flirting faux-modestly with flattered young ladies, has lately gone to great pains to show off his ugly side. He forged a career from playing wealthy, winsome suitors, but his recent turns as a hedge-fund magnate (Arbitrage), a moneyed philanthropist (The Benefactor), a high-flying politician (The Dinner) and a Murdoch-esque media mogul (MotherFatherSon) have all helped to flip the twinkly-eyed archetype on its head. Gere’s message is clear: I’m not the white knight you all thought I was.

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‘Biggest sin in the programme’: How a coat from The Undoing divided the internet

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The ugly green coat in the HBO drama The Undoing has usurped a starry cast that includes Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant. But what are the show’s makers trying to say, exactly?

The real star of The Undoing, HBO’s absurd marital melodrama, is not Hugh Grant, the Manhattan skyline or even the pair of David Hockneys hanging inside a vast penthouse in episode one. It’s a coat.

Sludge-green, calf-length, with wide lapels and a hood, this coat is worn again and again by Nicole Kidman’s character, a gnomic therapist called Grace, as she floats down Madison Avenue, through Central Park and even into the prison on Rikers Island, brooding over her marriage to a man who may, or may not, have just murdered his lover with a lump hammer.

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