Going against type
Hugh Grant goes all out as the baddie for Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen
HUGH GRANT is best known for playing the bumbling Englishman in romantic comedies, so when the role of a cockney-accented private investigator in Guy Ritchie’s new crime caper came up, the actor was a little hesitant to portray someone so different.
Grant plays the shady Fletcher in The Gentlemen, a far cry from his roles as a befuddled romantic in Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill.
“That was part of the appeal, but also part of the fear,” Grant told Reuters at a screening of The Gentlemen in London on Tuesday.
“I thought, I’m 59 now. Is it too ludicrous to suddenly be this guy completely from the other side of the tracks with a full-on London accent?
“Guy said: ‘No, no, no, no. You can do it. You can do it. Just own it.’ So I went for it.”
The film marks the return of Ritchie to his to crime film roots as he helms a comedy-drama filled with fishy characters.
Academy Award-winner Matthew McConaughey plays American drug dealer Mickey Pearson, who has built a marijuana business in Britain. When he decides to retire, he tries to sell off his drug empire, thereby sparking a fierce battle among both rivals and allies who desire to take it over.
The cast includes Colin Farrell as a no-nonsense boxing coach, Charlie Hunnam as Pearson’s right-hand man, Henry Golding as a gangster and Michelle Dockery as Pearson’s glamorous wife.
Ritchie found fame beginning in the late 1990s with the breakout gangster films Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, before directing Sherlock Holmes (2009) and this year’s Disney live-action version of Aladdin.
“I’m not sure if I missed (crime capers), it’s just as you get older ... I want to manifest more work,” he said.
“This is a script I wrote 15 years ago ... The genesis of it was ... from a while ago and it just felt like now was the time to make it.”
In the film, the sleazy character Fletcher works for a tabloid newspaper, and Grant, who was a victim of phone-hacking by reporters during the News of the World scandal, said he drew from his past for inspiration.
“I’ve come across a lot of private investigators who work for tabloid newspapers ... and some of them I had lunch with before the film. We’ve sort of become friends. Weirdly, these are people who hacked my phone. Some of them have been to prison for it, but now I’m quite friendly with.”
Grant has made British headlines for his campaigning against the return of a Conservative government, and a hard Brexit in the Dec 12 election.
“I panicked about the future of this country,” he said. “I think we’ve got eight days left to save it really from disaster.”