- HFPA
From The Archives: Hugh Grant
by Jack Tewksbury For forty years the HFPA has recorded interviews with famous and celebrated actors, actresses and filmmakers. The world’s largest collection of its kind — over 10,000 interviews — is now in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Library. The audios are fascinating. Below is an excerpt: Hugh Grant, in 1992, talking about the perils of kissing the director’s wife on the set of Roman Polanski’s Bitter Moon, and describing his relationship with then-girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley. “Roman Polanski’s marriage to actress Emmanuelle Seigner is like a ship with two mates and no captain. I think they’re having a marvelous time. Roman’s temperamental in the old fashioned tradition of the maestro director. It was fun to watch him lose his temper, particularly with Emmanuelle. There was a lot of that. He would storm off the set saying, “No, I’m not shooting anything today. No, no, forget it.” And she’d say, “Oh no, come back, come back. I’ll try harder this time.” It was very interesting, but she’s very naughty as well. I remember doing a standard film kiss, which is really quite chaste, and she kept breaking away and saying, “What are you doing? You put your tongue in my mouth! Don’t do that!” Which, I promise you, I wasn’t doing. She was just trying to create trouble with Roman. Elizabeth (Hurley) came up to me like a teenage fan. We met seven years ago in Spain on a film in which I was playing Lord Byron, and Elizabeth played the woman who was in love with him all her life. Clare Claremont. In fact I have a theory that she only really likes me as Lord Byron. We lived together in England for a long time, but after a few years we discovered she was getting more work in the U.S, and I was getting more work in England, so we ended up living on separate continents. Strangely, I think we’ve been getting on better ever since then. It’s fresher, and we fight less. What makes her so attractive? It’s very difficult to describe what one finds attractive, but she’s it. And I suppose I’m always rather endeared to people who fancy me, and she did. I remember she had a good line. She came up to me one day on the set and just said, “Hugh, I think I’ve got a crush on you.” And I loved that. I thought that was excellent, and we’ve been going out together ever since.