These days, Hugh Grant is more than just a movie star: he’s also a crusader against Britain’s toxic tabloid culture and, more recently, the ubiquity of screens in classrooms, as well as a doting husband and father of five. But once upon a time, from the late 1980s through the aughts, Grant was known primarily for his self-effacing sense of humor (so English!), his floppy hair, and his roles in some of the Western world’s most beloved romantic comedies, from Notting Hill to Love Actually and the Bridget Jones films.
Born Hugh John Mungo Grant in London in September 1960, Grant studied English literature at Oxford before formally beginning his film career in Merchant Ivory’s queer romantic drama Maurice, adapted from the E. M. Forster novel of the same name. The genteel Englishman would soon become his schtick, with James Lapine’s Impromptu, Merchant Ivory’s The Remains of the Day, and Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility establishing him as a period-drama mainstay in the 1990s, while Four Weddings and a Funeral, Nine Months, and About a Boy shored up his comic bona fides.
Over the last decade, Grant has tipped into a somewhat darker register, finding success in series like 2018’s A Very English Scandal, about the disgraced, closeted MP Jeremy Thorpe; HBO’s The Undoing, co-starring Nicole Kidman; and the psychological drama Heretic. But to his longtime fans, Grant has never lost his bumbling, boyish charms.
Here, in the wake of his 66th birthday, we revisit some dapper vintage pictures of the one and only Mr. Hugh Grant.
