With a love life like this, no wonder he wants to silence the press
ANYONE astonished at the news that Hugh Grant has not one, not two, but three love-children – by two different women – has never sat opposite him at dinner.
I have – only once, admittedly ... but still. And the truth is the photographs don’t quite do him justice.
on film he comes across as handsome but slightly reticent, a man not quite sure of himself, a bit useless, conversationally stilted. In movies, he is always cast as the reluctant lover, full of longing but short on action.
In real life he is quite the opposite. He is funny, quick-witted and incredibly charming. Even when talking to an old boiler like me, he has a way of making a woman feel like the most beautiful creature on the planet.
As a friend of mine once put it: ‘That man can fell a pair of knickers at 100 paces.’
So really, it’s no surprise at all to find that London is littered with his offspring. Like that other old roue, Mick Jagger, women appear to lose all reason in his presence.
When I met him, it was shortly after the birth of his daughter Tabitha by Tinglan Hong. You might expect me to say that he was blase about her – after all, he wasn’t in a relationship with the child’s mother. Theirs had been nothing more than a ‘ fleeting affair’ as he so ungallantly put it.
But he wasn’t: he was like any new father, flushed with excitement and quietly proud of himself.
He talked about how beautiful his daughter was, even left the dinner early to visit mother and child.
There was no question of him trying to deny paternity, or shirking financial responsibility. Later, he organised Tabitha’s Christening, proudly showing her off to all his friends.
The pregnancy was genuinely an accident. He and Tinglan met in a bar, and nature took its course.
So in that respect he behaved honourably. Many men in his position might have sought to dismiss the woman as a fantasist or a groupie.
But the one thing he seemed unable to countenance was a long-term relationship with the mother of his child. That was simply out of the question.
Then he went and did it again. Another child by Tinglan, a son called Felix, born in December 2012. Surely that would imply an on-going relationship of some sort?
Clearly not. Because we now know that at the time Hugh junior was
conceived, Grant was also sleeping with at least one other woman – the Swedish TV producer now revealed as mother of baby No 3, a boy born three months before Felix.
It is only when you realise this – and try to take in the somewhat distasteful fact that both women were pregnant with his sons at the same time – that you understand his reluctance to be a father in any traditional sense of the word. He clearly has little or no respect for the women involved. Even by modern standards, getting two women knocked up simultaneously is appalling behaviour.
It’s the kind of thing you expect from a Channel 4 documentary.
If Grant were some poor kid from the backstreets of Peckham, we would put his behaviour down to ignorance or social deprivation. But this is an intelligent, well-educated, privileged man. What’s his excuse?
Quite simply, Grant wants to have his Christening cake, eat it – and then tuck into seconds. He wants to be a dad, talk the proud talk at dinner parties, but doesn’t want any of the boring bits.
Like monogamy, the night-time feeds, the 5am wake-up calls, the grumpy, dishevelled wife, the lack of sex. Not to mention having to trade in the Maserati for a dreary Toyota Prius or, given the number of offspring in this case, a Ford Galaxy 7-seater, the ultimate mark of the downtrodden dad.
Grant may think he’s fulfilling his responsibilities by acknowledging paternity and providing generous financial provision, but that is not what being a father is really about.
Fatherhood is not a fancy coat you can sling on from time to time whenever it suits you. It’s a wellworn pair of jeans, almost certainly stained with sick.
Being a father is taking the rough with the smooth and discovering that pleasing yourself isn’t the only route to happiness in life.
It’s learning to love someone even if they scream the house down and smell suspiciously of poo. And it’s putting someone else’s needs before your own, if not always, then at the very least when nagged.
In short it’s growing up – a feat the actor, at 53, seems embarrassing incapable of.
OF course Grant is far from the only spoiled, selfish man to believe that he can have it all his own way. The trouble is, he is not most men. He is a public figure. He owes his success to selling a vision of himself to the public: a flawed but still lovable English toff of the old school.
His matinee idol looks and his acting talent have brought him fame and friends in high places – not to mention the financial wherewithal to support the fruits of his colourful love life.
And yet despite his ability and intelligence, he remains stubbornly unable to see why his behaviour should be in any way deserving of the slightest bit of curiosity or even criticism on the part of the countless members of the public he has wooed on screen.
Fame and fortune provided by millions of filmgoers is a privilege that few ever experience.
And if you are brilliant or lucky enough to enjoy its many comforts, you have at the very least a responsibility to your audience not to act with too great a sense of automatic entitlement, not to become a prisoner of arrogance and self-indulgence. Grant fails on both counts.
The only issue, other than his right to do exactly as he pleases, that appears ever to have aroused a passion within Grant’s breast, has been that of newspaper regulation.
Through his support, financial and vocal, of an organisation called Hacked Off, he has seized on the justifiable and wholly understandable public anger surrounding cases such as the hacking of Millie Dowler’s mobile telephone to ride the anti-press bandwagon to his – and his celebrity friends’ – advantage.
HOW Grant conducts his private life is, ultimately, his decision. But you cannot court the media when it suits you – to publish fawning interviews and film reviews to help make you rich and famous – and then spurn it when it doesn’t, such as when it comes to reporting the rather less savoury aspects of your existence.
Because the reality of an actor’s private life does influence how the public sees him. It’s hard to pull off playing the handsome charmer when the public thinks you’re sad and seedy – and an ocean-going hypocrite to boot.
Grant’s obsession with gagging the press looks like his treatment of the mothers of his children, entirely self-serving.
Whatever grand motives he may ascribe to his campaign, the fact remains that it appears to be tailored principally to the requirements of Hugh Grant, and those in his gilded world who also wish to behave without constraint or criticism.
And, let’s face it, we now know he has lots to hide.