Hugh Grant Talks Friendship With Renée Zellweger And Why He Left Acting

Hugh Grant Admits That Renée Zellweger Is 'One Of The Few' Actresses He 'Hasn't Fallen Out With'

And how 'Bridget Jones' Diary' was one of the reasons why he left acting - by Diandra Malivindi

If you lived and breathed anywhere from the mid '90s to the mid '00s, then you would know that Hugh Grant was the unofficial king of the rom-com.

As it turns out, Hugh Grant and one of his former onscreen love interests, Renée Zellweger, are still the best of friends.

In an appearance on SiriusXM’s The Jess Cagle Show, the 60-year-old actor openly discussed his continued friendship with his Bridget Jones' Diary costar.

"I love Renée. Uh, she's one of the few actresses I haven't fallen out with," he admitted. "And, we, we got on very well together and, we still exchange long emails."

"Hers in particular, at least 70 pages each, interesting stuff, but quite hard to decipher and, she's a properly good egg and a genius," he added. "Did you see her Judy Garland? About as good as acting gets."

Both Grant and Zellweger starred alongside each other in the 2001 flick as well as the sequels: Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004) and Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016).

However, Grant's increasing fame following such huge box office hits—including Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Love Actually—were the reason why the British star abruptly stepped down from his leading-man throne.

And according to Grant, it all began with him falling out of love with his on-screen work which left Hollywood to fall out of love with him.

“I developed a bad attitude from about 2005 on wards, shortly after Music and Lyrics,” he told the Los Angeles Times about his time on the film, in which he played a cynical singer alongside aspiring songwriter Drew Barrymore. “I just had enough.”

Despite his “bad attitude,” he chose to partake in another rom-com, starring opposite Sarah Jessica Parker in 2009's Did You Hear About the Morgans, which audiences weren't a fan of.

“At that point, it wasn’t me giving up Hollywood,” he noted. “Hollywood gave me up because I made such a massive turkey with that film with Sarah Jessica Parker. Whether I wanted to or not after that, the days of being a very well-paid leading man were suddenly gone overnight.”

Currently, Grant is working alongside actress Nicole Kidman in HBO's latest drama, The Undoing. Concluding his SiriusXM interview, the Notting Hill star touched on how the pair have worked around their different accents in various works.

"Nicole has always, she's done loads of films with an American accent... people think of her as half and half," he explained.

"As for me, it's not that I can't do an American accent it's, for me, I like to know precisely, very precisely, who characters are and where they've come from, what school did they go to? Which part of that, which town did they live in? What did the dad do for a living? What are their social aspirations or not aspirations? And I know all that with British characters, and I really don't know anything about those kinds of, that kind of detail in America."

"So I always worry that I just come out as kind of generic. And then, then I think, well, get an American actor. There's millions of brilliant ones," he said.

6 issues for $35 -

Subscribe to marie claire

Subscribe Now

6 issues for $35 -

Magazine Subscription Offer