Well Hugh, you have won me over. I have to admit, in the beginning all I could think of was how much better Colin Firth would have been this part, or Richard E. Grant, or Rupert Everett. But by the end of the film, I could not have seen anyone else lend this role as much heart and soul (and comic timing) as you did. Your performance was simply perfection. Hope the Oscars will take notice.
Well done, sir!
I'm not ashamed in the least to say I've loved him for years. I saw him first in "An Awfully Big Adventure" where he played a bit of an ass (which he does exceptionally well). There have been, for me, a few stumbles...9 Months and American Dreamz to name a few, but he has been in some of my favorite films.
Sense and Sensibility, About a Boy and Four Weddings and a Funeral are among Grants best roles. I'm not a big Julia Roberts fan, but he made Notting Hill the hit that it was (and has remained for years). Supporting roles in Remains of the Day and Love Actually lent much to those films. I didn't love "Love Actually" but I enjoyed Grants segment of the movie very much. I found him charmingly obnoxious in Two Weeks Notice.
It takes all kinds of actors to bring the movies we love to life. Actors like Meryl Streep and Daniel Day Lewis are at the top of the heap, acclaimed and held in the highest esteem (as they should be), but there is as much need for actors like Grant as for the A List team of Oscar winning regulars.
And to the poster who said that Grants role in Florence Foster Jenkins was a supporting one: It is anything but! We love her because St. Clair loves her so much. Without his adoration, she would be a joke to us as she was to so many in real life. He was as central to the film as Streep...possibly more so.
He is also gorgeous (yes, even now that he has aged a bit). I hope to see him in many more films!
Et lux perpetua luceat eis
I think Hugh Grant gave the best performance of the film. It was so funny and yet so sweet. Streep was good (and I say this as someone who can't stand Streep), but she felt a little forced at times. Helberg's performance felt forced a lot of the time.
Grant easily wins for me.
Poorly Lived and Poorly Died, Poorly Buried and No One Criedshare
He did some wonderful non-rom-com work, The Awfully Big Adventure cited above, creepy but good, for example, but audiences loved his Four Weddings character and his made a fortune playing, basically, that role. And I think he got type cast, everyone expected that of him.
I'm a little curious to hear what you "can't stand" about her. Only because she seems to be about the most universally praised actress still living.
shareHer earlier work is good but from the 2000s or so onward she seems to have these affectations and a certain smugness in all her performances. The smugness is even more at award shows where she acts all humble and like I don't deserve this but it stinks of superiority. Okay granted she's entitled to some superiority but she still rubs me the wrong way.
In the past decade or so she seems to have been getting nominated just because she is who she is and not because her performances are actually that good.
Poorly Lived and Poorly Died, Poorly Buried and No One Criedshare
Gotcha. The awards shows are glorified popularity contests, more often than not. And Streep has been nominated for an Academy Award, what, 20+ times? I doubt even Brando had *that* many Oscar-worthy performances.
shareAgree. Great performance. Oscar material. Doing comedy and drama at the same time is the hardest. And Hugh always delivers. More so in FFJ.
shareI think he really is the one that gave weight to the movie.
I think without him it wouldn't have been much more than an uplifting comedy.