Hugh Grant Revisits Meltdown, Says He ‘Went Mad’ And ‘Couldn’t Stop Crying’


In the 90s, Hugh Grant was seen as the most sought-after leading man, scoring roles in popular RomComs such as Four Wedding and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Nine Months, and Sense and Sensibility. Even his 1995 arrest for soliciting a prostitute couldn’t stop his career.

That said, things got a little shaky in the millennium. After his breakup from longtime girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley, Grant’s career took a dip with the death of the RomCom genre. Now that he’s starring opposite Meryl Streep in the new film Florence Foster Jenkins, he’s willing to go back and revisit his meltdown.

Grant opened up about the meltdown he had in 2007. While promoting his newest film on The Late Late Show, the British actor opened up about the bad time.

Host James Corden mentioned that when the two met, he remembered Grant telling him his whole life story, and that’s when Grant quipped, “I do that now, I can’t tell you why. I have to stop. I spent half my life campaigning for privacy and the other half revealing everything about myself.”

After Corden joked if Grant had gone to therapy, Hugh got honest with the audience and host James Corden.

“Only once, I went mad in 2007,” he said, seemingly serious. “I got massaged into madness. I went on a holiday in the Maldives and I was extremely bored, so I thought, ‘I’ll have another massage.’ I was having about 30 massages a day. At the end of the holiday, I felt a little strange… I got on the plane to go home, opened the newspaper reading the football results, and I burst into tears. And I couldn’t stop crying for three weeks. It was completely absurd… so I went to see shrinks then.”

While his meltdown was private until now, there was some indication that Hugh Grant was struggling. It was two years after his meltdown that Grant made what he calls “regrettable comments” about former co-stars Julianne Moore and Drew Barrymore. If you remember, he started in the film Music and Lyrics with Barrymore in 2007, which as we now know was a significant year in Grant’s life.

Back in April, Grant was on The Graham Norton Show and was asked about comments he made about his co-stars when he was interviewed by Elle magazine in 2009. In the interview, the actor was told to give three adjectives about his co-stars, and while he had great words for Emma Thompson, calling her “clever” and “funny,” he had a few chosen adjectives for others.

“Renée Zellweger: Delightful. Also far from sane. Very good kisser. Sandra Bullock: A genius. A German. Too many dogs. Julianne Moore: Brilliant actress. Loathes me. Rachel Weisz: Clever. Beautiful. Despises me. Drew Barrymore: Made her cry. Stunning film-star face. Hates me.”

Of those comments, Grant told Graham Norton that those comments were “regrettable.” When asked to talk about his comments, he took the time to re-clarify what he meant. He said that while his comments on Zellweger were “fair” and that she’s “genuinely lovely” that “her emails are 48 pages long” and “you can’t understand a word of them.”

As for Barrymore, the reason why he made her cry was due to a confrontation while filming the poorly received aforementioned film. At the time, he said the actress “[m]ade the mistake of giving me notes.”

Fortunately for Grant, he seems to be in a better place in his life.

[Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP Images]

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