Grant: I deserved to be fat-shamed

Don’t mention it, Hugh, you know the Mail’s always happy to help!

WITH his love handles and pasty tummy on show, this was hardly the most flattering holiday photo of Hugh Grant.

But the actor has said he was not angry to see it printed in the papers, including the Daily Mail, in June and to read the flurry of harsh comments that followed.

Instead, the 55-year-old said it was right he was ‘fat-shamed’, admitting he ‘looked shocking’.

The father of four, who was on holiday with his children in Marbella when the photo was taken, said in a radio interview with US DJ Howard Stern: ‘I was fathis shamed the other day and they were right. So I go to Spain, take my children into the water like a good daddy. They weren’t wrong – I looked shocking. It was awful.’

Grant, who became a household name starring in Four Weddings and a Funeral in 1994, added: ‘The headline was four bellies and turkey neck ... It was bleak.’

The star blamed his love of alcohol for the transformation of his once toned figure, telling Stern: ‘I like to drink, that is my curse – anything, beer mainly, and that is the real killer.’

Grant may be best known for roles in romantic comedies, but he said he did not see himself ever finding ‘the one’. After the end of his 13-year relationship with actress Liz Hurley, 51, in 2000, Grant’s love life has been somewhat complicated. He has a daughter Tabitha, four, with receptionist Tinglan Hong.

He then had a son, John Mungo, three, with Swedish TV producer Anna Eberstein, and briefly reunited with Miss Hong, with whom he also has a three-yearold son, Felix. Both women were pregnant at the same time.

Grant and Miss Eberstein went on to have another child, a daughter, born in December 2015.

Grant joked he was unlovable because he is nothing like the hopeless romantic he plays on screen. He said the persona was ‘all fake’, adding that he is a ‘nasty piece of work, an egomaniac’.

‘I am an egomaniac’