When faced with the decision to name the film he wished he could erase from his career or eat worm mayonnaise shepherd’s pie, Hugh Grant had to think long and hard.
The English actor and “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” co-star Chris Pine appeared on the March 29 episode of “The Late Late Show With James Corden,” where they engaged in a hilarious game of “Spill Your Guts or Fill Your Guts.”
If Grant, 62, didn’t name a movie he would erase from his IMDB page, he would have to eat the pie. The actor smiled and said he would “happily shred” his online resume because he’s “specialized in being bad for decades.”
While Corden disagreed, Grant explained that it’s one thing for him to say his work was bad, “but I can’t bring down the rest of the wonderful colleagues who worked with me on any film by saying it was bad.”
Despite his dilemma, the British star did name one project: “The Lady and the Highwayman.”
The movie was a 1988 made-for-TV film in which he portrayed Lord Lucius Vyne. According to its IMDB page, the synopsis reads: “Swashbuckling tale of romance, betrayal, jealousy, banditry, murder, and court intrigue set in the 1660s, during the Restoration to the English throne of King Charles II.”
“I’m a highway man. I’m meant to be sexy,” Grant, who was 28 when the film was released, said. “Low-budget, bad wig, bad hat. I look like Deputy Dawg.”
“When I’m tense, my voice goes up two octaves. Deputy Dawg would come leaping out of trees when a carriage would come past and go, ‘Stand and deliver!’” he added, as the film’s poster appeared on the screen, and he apologized to his “wonderful colleagues.”
Fans of the actor know he led some of the biggest rom-coms, including “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Notting Hill,” “Bridget Jones’ Diary,” “2 Weeks Notice” and “Love Actually,” among others.
In a 2019 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he joked he got “too old and ugly and fat to do them anymore, so now I’ve done other things and I’ve got marginally less self-hatred.”
The following year, Grant further explained why he decided to leave Hollywood and the romantic comedies that made him a star.
“I developed a bad attitude from about 2005 onwards, shortly after ‘Music and Lyrics,’” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2020 of his movie with Drew Barrymore. “I just had enough.”
When 2009’s “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” with Sarah Jessica Parker was a flop, he knew something was different.
“At that point, it wasn’t me giving up Hollywood. Hollywood gave me up because I made such a massive turkey with that film with Sarah Jessica Parker,” he said. “Whether I wanted to or not after that, the days of being a very well-paid leading man were suddenly gone overnight.”
However, while promoting the drama series “The Undoing” in 2020, Grant did joke that he would love to do a sequel to “Notting Hill” — but it’s not what you think.
“I would like to do a sequel to one of my own romantic comedies that shows what happened after those films ended, to really prove the terrible lie that they all were, that it was a happy ending,” Grant said. “I’d like to do me and Julia and the hideous divorce that’s ensued, with really expensive lawyers and children involved in tug of love, floods of tears, psychologically scarred forever.”