Hugh Grant Is enjoying the 'freak show era' of his career

The seemingly droll, breezy star is utterly serious about his work, including his villainous turn in the horror film Heretic

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NEW YORK - Hugh Grant has been suffering from brand confusion since 1994, when his performance in Four Weddings And A Funeral established him as a quintessentially British romantic hero of winning charm and diffidence.

But his recent run of strange and sometimes creepy characters plays so effectively against type that you begin to suspect you were mistaken about his type all along.

He would be the first to say that something darker and more complicated lurks beneath his easy surface.

"At school, I had a teacher who used to take me aside and say, 'Who is the real Hugh Grant? Because I think the one we're seeing might be insincere,'" Grant said as he strolled through Central Park in September.

He was comparing himself - or at least his powers of persuasion - to Mr Reed, the charismatically articulate villain he plays in Heretic, a religious-horror movie. "The ability to manipulate and sort of seduce - I might be guilty of that."

Opening in Singapore cinemas on Dec 12, the film revolves around two young missionaries (Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East) who are forced to prove their faith when they knock on the wrong door and are greeted by Mr Reed and become ensnared in his deadly game of cat-and-mouse.

At 64, Grant is enjoying what he calls "the freak show era" of his career, playing an unlikely rogue's gallery of suave miscreants (The Undoing, 2020; A Very English Scandal, 2018), seedy gangsters (The Gentlemen, 2019), power-hungry tricksters (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, 2023) and self-deluded thespians (Paddington 2, 2017; Unfrosted, 2024), not to mention the bumptious little Oompa-Loompa in Wonka (2023).