Just how stressed is Hugh Grant, you ask? Let him tell you:
"Well, apart from the fact we're having a second spike of coronavirus and we're about to be smashed by a no-deal Brexit, and food shortages and medicine shortages, and everyone is furious and terrified in the streets, and my children won't sleep and I've got a terrible hangover, everything's perfect."
The actor is speaking by phone because a Zoom call was thwarted by technical difficulties, likely contributing to an already chaotic day. Make that year. Like many of us, Grant has spent the majority of 2020 at home. And as a 60-year-old with five children under the age of 10 — three with his wife, Anna Eberstein — that comes with challenges.
"I'm an old man with very young children and a very exhausted wife. So it's just about survival from hour to hour in terms of childcare," says Grant. In between reading scripts and torturing various colleagues "by pretending I'm going to do their project, like a cat with a dead bird," Grant has whiled away his months of isolation "going in and out of a 2-year-old's bedroom and saying 'shh' or words to that effect, though not always that gentle."
Grant's transformation from renowned bachelor to harried stay-at-home dad matches the recent course change in his professional trajectory. For decades after his breakthrough role in "Four Weddings and a Funeral," his name was synonymous with romantic comedies that relied on his prodigious wit. But after a period of semiretirement a decade ago and a stint as a fierce critic of the British tabloid press, he's sparked a career renaissance by playing an array of fascinating creeps, dastardly villains and vain enablers who all happen to be, in his words, "rampant narcissists."
These include an egomaniacal actor in "Paddington 2" and a closeted politician who plots to have his male lover murdered in "A Very English Scandal," which earned Grant his first Emmy nomination. The streak continues in "The Undoing," a glossy HBO limited series that features Grant as Jonathan Fraser, a dashing, wealthy pediatric oncologist who may or may not be a homicidal psychopath.
Nicole Kidman, who plays Jonathan's glamorous therapist wife, has been friendly with Grant for decades, but "The Undoing" marks their first onscreen pairing. She says Grant has "always had a love-hate relationship with his work," perhaps because it's difficult to find roles that tap into "his extraordinary combination of humor and dramatic acting ability."
Susanne Bier, who directed "The Undoing," offers her own take: "The darker side was always there in his romantic comedies. But the last few years he has allowed the melancholic side to gain more territory." In casting Jonathan, Bier was "looking for a weird mix of compassion and unpredictability, and Hugh has both to an extreme degree. On a scale of innocuous mischievousness to sinister mischievousness, you can't tell where he is."
Bier says she constantly fielded phone calls from Grant, who "worried about every line."
"He is very meticulous," she says. "Because he is so amazingly charming, people don't realize how incredibly talented and deep he actually is. I think that must have been, at some point, frustrating for him. Not anymore."
Grant spoke to The Times in advance of "The Undoing's" finale on Sunday . The following has been condensed and edited for clarity.
