Hugh Grant with a model of the character he voices in his latest film, The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists. Photograph: William Selden for the Guardia
In his latest role, he's taken on the tabloids – 'a vicious and vindictive industry'. But soon Hugh Grant will be back on familiar ground, giving voice to a big, barrel-chested pirate. In a rare interview, he tells Decca Aitkenhead about standing up for what is right, fatherhood and the genius of Aardman.
The Hugh Grant I meet in a west London restaurant could barely look less relaxed if I'd found him in the dock at the Old Bailey. The mischievously witty actor we know from our screens is nowhere to be seen; in his place is a sober and strained-looking man who actually shudders as we greet.
"Well, I'm very unrelaxed doing a newspaper interview. I think it's only the third British newspaper interview I've done to promote a film in 16 years. But I want to be nice to the Guardian, because I think they've been brilliant." He looks excruciatingly uncomfortable. "Yes, that would be correct," he concurs. How horrible is this for him? "Well, I really hate giving newspaper interviews. I don't want people to be able to say, 'Oh look, he's using this hacking issue to get attention for himself.' It just sticks in my craw if it's about me." Is this as bad as he'd feared? "Yes. It is."
I confess I'm nervous, too, unsure how to interview the star of a campaign against press intrusion without trespassing on the very privacy he's been so persuasively defending. Ever since Grant became the poster boy of the Hacked Off campaign against press criminality and corruption, the tabloids have been poisonous, hounding the mother of his newborn child and accusing him of lying to the Leveson inquiry.
READ MORE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/mar/16/hugh-grant-hacking-pirates-film?newsfeed=true
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