Not Just Another Pretty Face

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

There he was preparing to cavort in the buff with Andie MacDowell. For a seasoned, swaggering movie heartthrob, that scene might have been an irresistible chance to show off, but for Hugh Grant the occasion proved mortifying. "The first time I took my shirt off on the set," he says, referring to the filming of Four Weddings and a Funeral, "the make-up artist asked, 'Do you want definition painted in?' What was even more tragic is that I would have liked it but could not face having it painted on in front of everyone else. I'm still getting over that."

A 33-year-old Londoner, all beguiling smile and self-deprecating wit, Grant is the leading man of the moment. Four Weddings, a British romantic comedy, has become a surprise hit, earning more money per theater than any other current top-grossing movie. In the film, Grant plays Charles, a shy, befuddled single guy who is unable to commit to a woman. He falls for a beautiful American (MacDowell), and when he finally manages to reveal his true feelings to her, he does it by declaring, "In the words of David Cassidy -- when he was with the Partridge Family -- I think I love you."

Presumably less equivocal in real life, Grant has been dating a British actress, Elizabeth Hurley, for seven years. He continues to live in the un- swanky neighborhood of Earl's Court in London; she lives in Los Angeles. Lovable guy that he is, Grant buys clothes for Hurley and sends his finds west. "I've become rather worryingly interested in women's clothes," he says. "I find myself buying Vogue for pleasure. I think in a year's time I'll be wearing them."

The son of a schoolteacher mother and carpet-salesman-turned-artist father, Grant graduated from Oxford University with a degree in English. After a stint in repertory ("I was bored playing the tree that waved in the wind and the fourth angry peasant"), he wrote and performed in satirical revues. Grant's drollness led James Ivory to cast him in Maurice, the director's adaptation of E.M. Forster's somber novel about homosexual lovers. Ivory had wanted to bring a dash of humor to the film, and he thought Grant could provide it. Maurice was Grant's first major film role, and it had the unanticipated result of turning him into a huge star in Japan. There were even two books about him published there. "For a few years, I was getting sacks full of origami and very sensitive letters which said I have sensitive eyes and a kind face," he says. "Little did they know I wanted their money, not their love." To Grant's dismay, Maurice pegged him for dramas, and he wound up in a variety of serious Eurofilms including Merchant-Ivory's Remains of the Day. "If they would only give me something lighter," he recalls saying to himself, "I'd be better." Finally, Grant's amusing performance in Roman Polanski's Bitter Moon brought him to the attention of Four Weddings director Mike Newell and led to his screen break in a real comedy.

In the Polanski film Grant played a stodgy Englishman who is all too fascinated by an acquaintance's lurid sex tales. Like this character, Grant may appear proper, but he has a devilish streak. Four Weddings producer Duncan Kenworthy says Grant is "like the naughty boy telling wicked tales out of school." Indeed, when talking about Andie MacDowell, Grant is quick to point out that he watched her dribble tea on her Chanel jacket. "To my eternal delight, that's how she became known, as 'the dribbler.' " But Grant's gossipy sarcasm is apparently not always that innocuous. "I am capable of being really quite nasty," he confesses. Mike Newell would agree. "He has a view of people which can be very, very cruel if he wants to be. He is a very bright man. He will not suffer fools gladly." A detached quality is evident in conversation with Grant: his dressing room may be littered with clothes and old letters, he may mock himself endearingly, but he nevertheless has a manner that is controlled and self-contained.

+ Newell is taking advantage of Grant's less sunny side in An Awfully Big Adventure, a period film in which Grant portrays a somewhat mean-spirited and domineering actor-director. "It's a bit upsetting," jokes Grant, "that Mike Newell cast me in Four Weddings because he thought I was a nice, fun-loving kind of guy. By the end of six weeks, he was ready to cast me as my unpleasant real self." The question, though, is whether or not moviegoers will take warmly to any exhibition of Grantian unpleasantness. At his most attractive, Grant exudes the vulnerability of someone unaware of his own prodigious appeal. He takes to the dance floor in Bitter Moon, for example, and displays the awkwardness of a man who thinks he looks like Bill Gates. In the Australian erotic romp Sirens, supermodel Elle Macpherson spends a good deal of the time languidly sucking her fingers in front of Grant's character, but he barely notices. "He's got a skill that no one else has at this point," says Duncan Kenworthy. "He's found something that's gone from the movies: the intelligent comic leading man." Some would like to keep him that way.

With reporting by Georgia Harbison/New York and Barry Hillenbrand/Dublin