Love, finally: Hugh Grant marries for the first time at 57
IT WAS only relatively recently that Hugh Grant called marriage “unromantic” and said humans were not meant for long, faithful relationships.
But the 57-year-old actor, who jilted his bride at the altar in Four Weddings and a Funeral, married for the first time in real life yesterday.
Grant and his Swedish girlfriend, Anna Eberstein, 39, who have three young children, married in a simple ceremony in London.
They were accompanied by close family members at a register office in Chelsea, not far from their home.
The couple were pictured hand-inhand and beaming as they walked down the confetti-strewn steps of the Chelsea Old
Town Hall following the ceremony shortly after 4pm.
One or two guests took photographs on their mobile phones but the occasion was mostly low-key and discreet.
The bride, who was holding their two-year-old daughter, dressed down for the occasion in a short white skirt she previously wore at the 2017 French Open, a blue shirt and espadrilles. She also wore a simple gold wedding band.
Her new husband was dressed in a navy suit and sported an unusual large silver wedding ring with three stones.
The couple had earlier enjoyed lunch with their relatives from both sides of their family at Colbert, a French bistro on nearby Sloane Square. Grant had a string of high-profile relationships before getting together with Ms Eberstein six years ago. Best known was his 13-year romance with Liz Hurley, who remains one of his closest friends despite their split in 2000. Grant is godfather to Hurley’s teenage son Damian.
The actor has five children, all of them born in the last seven years. The first, daughter Tabitha, was born in September 2011 to Tinglan Hong, 39, with whom Grant’s publicist said he had a “fleeting affair”.
Four months after Tabitha’s birth, it was revealed that Grant was about to become a father with Ms Eberstein.
Three months later, it emerged that Ms Hong was pregnant by the actor again, this time with their son, Felix.
Ms Eberstein had a son, John, in September 2012, a daughter in December 2015 and a third baby earlier this year.
In August 2016, Grant claimed the secret to a happy marriage was to have affairs.
Interviewed by radio host Howard Stern, he said: “Do I think human beings are meant to be in 40-year monogamous, faithful relationships? … No. Whoever said they were?”