Hugh Grant Hated His Most Iconic Scene
Hugh Grant hated his iconic dance scene in Love Actually.
Hugh Grant absolutely hated the iconic scene in the 2003 Christmas romantic comedy Love Actually in which he dances to the Pointer Sisters’ song “Jump” and initially refused to perform it. In a recent ABC News special about the film, titled The Laughter & Secrets of Love Actually: 20 Years Later, Hugh Grant and writer/director Richard Curtis told Diane Sawyer that the Paddington 2 actor had despised the scene from the script on forward and that he repeatedly tried to get out of filming it.
However, Grant says that he faced a “contractual guillotine” (which is likely a very evocative way of saying the studio knew that getting early-2000s Hugh Grant to dance was box office gold) and could not actually get out of doing it. Richard Curtis says that he thinks Grant maybe hoped he would get sick and not have to film it (which feels unlikely even in as large of an ensemble as Love Actually) and that he showed up “grumpy” on the day, which would not be the first time he has been described that way.
Hugh Grant goes so far state that he thinks it is one of the worst things ever filmed:
[T]o this day, there’s many people, and I agree with them, who think it’s the most excruciating scene ever committed to celluloid. But then some people like it.
We’ll let you judge for yourself on that one:
In Love Actually, Hugh Grant stars as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who finds himself involved in a romantic entanglement with Natalie (Martine McCutcheon), a member of his household staff at 10 Downing Street, which does not feel as though it would be very appropriate. The film also stars Billy Bob Thornton (as the United States President), The Walking Dead’s Andrew Lincoln, Liam Neeson, the late Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, and many, many more.
Though Hugh Grant hated doing this particular scene in Love Actually, the British actor does not seem to be particularly against getting silly on screen. He earned rave reviews for his role as an over-the-top, egotistical actor scheming against a talking, miniature Peruvian bear in Paddington 2, even considering it one of his favorite roles ever. Even earlier in his career, Hugh Grant had played a dopey country squire who had to fight off a god in the form of a hideous subterranean worm, so it is safe to say that he is pretty used to doing odd things onscreen.
Of course, Hugh Grant has had a remarkably odd life even off-screen, being largely responsible for shutting down one of the UK’s oldest and most widely circulated newspapers after getting into a traffic accident. Currently, Hugh Grant is starring in Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, among yet another enormous ensemble cast. Glass Onion is currently in theaters and will be streaming on Netflix in December.
Hugh Grant will soon be starring in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves alongside Chris Pine, which definitely will not involve any weirdly goofy scenes that he might be embarrassed about later. Grant has also been announced to star in Unfrosted: The Pop-Tart Story, directed by comedy legend Jerry Seinfeld, and starring, as one might guess, an enormous ensemble cast.
