Hugh Grant Rejected Studio Movies Amid Pushback From Non-Creative Execs

Hugh Grant revealed in a new interview with Vanity Fair that he’s rejected several offers to star in major Hollywood studio films. The actor popped up as the villain in last year’s Paramount tentpole “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” and it appears that movie was the rare studio movie to get Grant’s sign of approval.

“I’ve turned down a few that I thought were insufficient in quality or independence allowed to the filmmakers — you felt like a big corporation breathing down the neck of these filmmakers, and I don’t want to make that decision,” Grant said about turning down Hollywood tentpoles. “I asked them bluntly. I quizzed the directors. You can tell quite early on, since you might have a few ideas about the part before you’ve signed up — you suggest things, and you can tell if there’s a lot of pushback from non-creative executives.”

Grant championed “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” as an exception and said “it’s such a good film.” However, the tentpole struggled at the box office and grossed just over $200 million worldwide.

“It’s the biggest mystery to me — why didn’t anyone do market research before?” Grant said. “I think that’s what went wrong: Basically, people just thought, I don’t want to see a film about this game. Why had no one asked the public?”

It appears that “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” will not be Hollywood’s next big franchise, but Grant is soon returning to one of his most beloved series by reprising Daniel Cleaver in the upcoming fourth “Bridget Jones” movie, “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.” Grant skipped 2016’s “Bridget Jones’s Baby” because “I really couldn’t fit my character in — he just didn’t belong, so I stepped aside.” And the same thing nearly happened on “Mad About the Boy.”

“I loved the script — it made me cry, and I wanted to help with this one,” Grant said. “But really there’s no part for Daniel Cleaver in it at all. They wanted him in it, and in the end, they’d done something I wasn’t crazy about.”

Grant decided to write some scenes of his own centered around Daniel Cleaver to make him have more weight in the story, and the filmmakers liked them enough to keep them. That was enough to get Grant to sign on to star.

“It’s absolutely the best [Bridget Jones book], and I think the movie is very funny and very, very moving,” he added. “I’m not in a lot, I did a week’s work, that’s it … But when you see the film, you’ll be very moved.”

“Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” will stream on Peacock on February 14, 2025. Head over to Vanity Fair’s website to read more from Grant’s latest profile.