Hugh Grant Says His 'Notting Hill' Character is "Despicable"

Twenty-five years after Hugh Grant starred alongside Julia Roberts in the hit romantic comedy Notting Hill, the actor is finally letting fans know how he really feels about his character in the film.

"Whenever I'm flicking the channels at home after a few drinks, and this comes up, I just think, 'Why doesn't my character have any balls?'" Grant said in a recent Nov. 14 video interview with Vanity Fair, referring to his character William "Will" Thacker.

"There's a scene in this film where [Julia Roberts's character] is in my house and the paps come to the front door and ring the bell, and I think I just let her go past me and open the door, and that's awful," he continued. "I've never had a girlfriend, or indeed, now wife, who hasn't said, 'Why the hell didn't you stop her? What’s wrong with you?' And I don't really have an answer to that."

The actor went on to say that he acted out the scene as "it was written," but that doesn't stop him from thinking that his character is "despicable, really."

In the 1999 flick directed by Roger Michell, Grant plays a London bookstore owner who meets and falls in love with Roberts's character, Anna Scott, a famous American movie star.

After a chance encounter at the bookstore over spilled orange juice, the pair enter into an unlikely relationship that has them both trying to adjust to their radically different lifestyles in order to make their budding romance work.

While Grant is hardly impressed with his character all these years later, the actor had nothing but lovely things to say about his former co-star and her on-screen performance. (Both actors 2000 Golden Globe nominations after the film was released.)

"Probably all the time with Julia, as with any brilliant actress, you're just thinking, 'Oh, Christ, they're really good. I'm not going to be as good as her,'" he explained. "And she is great at emoting, and she's got that kind of quality where it looks like her skin is wafer thin. You can sort of see her soul."

In a 2020 interview for The Hollywood Reporter's drama actor roundtable, Grant revealed that he did develop something of an "inferiority complex" as a result of starring in rom-coms, adding that he no longer feels like he is suited for those kind of roles.

"Well, yes, but less now because I've gotten 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 actor said at the time.

"I was being paid tons of money," he continued. "I was very lucky. And most of those romantic comedies I can look squarely in the face — one or two are shockers, but on the whole I can look them in the face, and people like them.

"I am a big believer that our job is to entertain. It's not to practice some weird, quasi-religious experience," he added. "I see us as craftsmen along with the guy who does the lights and the guy who edits and the guy who pushes the dolly."