Grant, Hugh (1960– )

English actor. He played a hapless Englishman in the highly successful British film Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), and recreated the role in Notting Hill (1999), a film created by the same team. After a period of less successful US films, he was acclaimed for his performances in Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), About a Boy (2002), and Love Actually (2003).

He made his screen debut in Privileged (1982). Other films include Maurice (1987), Impromptu (1990), The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain, Nine Months, Sense and Sensibility (all 1995), Extreme Measures (1996), Mickey Blue Eyes (1999), and the sequel Bridget Jones: the Edge of Reason (2004).

Grant often portrays characters from a privileged background, full of public school charm and with little knowledge of the ‘real’ world. His acidic homosexual theatre director in An Awfully Big Adventure (1994) and his sexually repressed clergyman in Sirens (1993) are slight variations from this archetype.

He founded the production company Simian Films in 1994 with his then partner English actor and model Elizabeth Hurley.