Hugh John Mungo Grant (born 9 September 1960) is an English actor. He established himself early in his career as a charming and vulnerable romantic leading man, and has since transitioned into a character actor. He has received several accolades including a British Academy Film Award and a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards. He received an Honorary César in 2006. In 2022, Time Out magazine listed Grant as one of Britain's 50 greatest actors of all time. As of 2025, his films have grossed over US$4 billion worldwide.
Grant made his feature film acting debut in Privileged (1982), followed by the romantic drama Maurice (1987) for which he gained acclaim as well as the Volpi Cup for Best Actor. He then acted in a string of successful period dramas such as The Remains of the Day (1993), Sense and Sensibility (1995) and Restoration (1995). Grant emerged as a star with Richard Curtis's romantic comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), for which he won the Golden Globe and BAFTA Award for Best Actor. He starred in further romantic comedies such as Notting Hill (1999), Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) and its 2004 and 2025 sequels, About a Boy (2002), Two Weeks Notice (2002), Love Actually (2003) and Music and Lyrics (2007).
Grant began to take against-type parts earning nominations for two BAFTA Awards for Best Supporting Actor for his roles as St. Clair Bayfield in Florence Foster Jenkins (2016) and a haughty actor in Paddington 2 (2017). He has also acted in the science fiction film Cloud Atlas (2012), the crime comedy film The Gentlemen (2019), the fantasy comedy film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023), the musical fantasy Wonka (2023), and the horror film Heretic (2024), which earned him another BAFTA nomination. He earned two nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Actor for his roles as Jeremy Thorpe in the BBC miniseries A Very English Scandal (2018) and a man accused of murder in the HBO miniseries The Undoing (2020).
Grant has been outspoken about his antipathy towards the profession of acting, his disdain towards the culture of celebrity, and his hostility towards the media. He emerged as a prominent critic of the conduct of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation during the News International phone hacking scandal.
Early life and education
Grant was born on 9 September 1960 in Hammersmith Hospital, the second son of Fynvola Susan MacLean (1933–2001) and Captain James Murray Grant (born 1929). His grandfather, Colonel James Murray Grant, DSO, was decorated for bravery and leadership at Saint-Valery-en-Caux during World War II. Genealogist Anthony Adolph has described Grant's family history as "a colourful Anglo-Scottish tapestry of warriors, empire-builders, and aristocracy." His family tree includes Sir Walter Raleigh; William Drummond, 4th Viscount Strathallan; James Stewart; John Murray, 1st Marquess of Atholl; Heneage Finch, 1st Earl of Nottingham; Sir Evan Nepean; and a sister of Prime Minister Spencer Perceval.
Grant's father was an officer in the Seaforth Highlanders for eight years in Malaya and Germany. He ran a carpet business and pursued hobbies such as golf and watercolour painting; he raised his family in Chiswick, west London, where the Grants lived next to Arlington Park Mansions on Sutton Lane. In September 2006, a collection of Capt. Grant's paintings was hosted by The John Martin Gallery in a charity exhibition, organised by his son, called "James Grant: 30 Years of Watercolours". Hugh's mother worked as a schoolteacher and taught Latin, French and music for more than 30 years in the state schools of west London. She died at 67 of pancreatic cancer.
On Inside the Actors Studio in 2002, Grant credited his mother with "any acting genes that [he] might have." Both his parents were children of military families, but despite that background, he has said, his family was not always affluent as he grew up. He spent many of his childhood summers hunting and fishing with his grandfather in Scotland. Grant has an older brother, James "Jamie" Grant, a New York-based investment banker.
Grant started his education at Hogarth Primary School in Chiswick, then moved to St Peter's Primary School in Hammersmith, followed by Wetherby School, a private preparatory school in Notting Hill. From 1969 to 1978, he attended Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith, at the time a direct grant grammar school. He was educated on a scholarship and played 1st XV rugby, cricket, and football. He also represented Latymer Upper on the quiz show Top of the Form, an academic competition between two teams of four secondary school students each.
In 1979, he won a Galsworthy scholarship to study at the University of Oxford as a student of New College, Oxford, where he read English literature and graduated with an upper second class degree. Then viewing acting as nothing more than a creative outlet, he joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society and played Fabian in a production of Twelfth Night. He also starred in his first film, Privileged (1982), produced by the Oxford University Film Foundation. He turned down an offer from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, to pursue a PhD in art history because he failed to secure a grant.
Career
1982–1986: Early roles and breakthrough
After making his debut in the Oxford-financed film Privileged (1982), Grant dabbled in a variety of jobs, such as working as an assistant groundsman at Fulham stadium Craven Cottage, tutoring, writing comedy sketches for TV shows and working for Talkback Productions to write and produce radio commercials for products such as Mighty White bread and Red Stripe lager. At a screening of Privileged at BAFTA in London, he was approached by a talent agent offering to represent him. Still intending to begin his MPhil at the Courtauld Institute, Grant declined, but then later reconsidered, thinking that acting for a year would be a good way to save some money for his studies. Soon afterwards he was offered a supporting role in The Bounty (1984) starring Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins, but was prevented from playing the role because he did not yet have an Equity card, which could only be earned through acting in regional theatre. To obtain his Equity card, he joined the Nottingham Playhouse and lived for a year at Park Terrace in The Park Estate in Nottingham. Richard Digby Day directed him in small roles at the Nottingham Playhouse in Lady Windermere's Fan, an avant-garde production of Hamlet, and Coriolanus.
Bored with small acting parts, Grant created a sketch-comedy group called The Jockeys of Norfolk, a name taken from Shakespeare's Richard III, with friends Chris Lang and Andy Taylor. The group toured London's pub comedy circuit with stops at The George IV in Chiswick, Canal Cafe Theatre in Little Venice and The King's Head in Islington. The Jockeys of Norfolk proved a hit at the 1985 Edinburgh Festival Fringe after their sketch on the Nativity, told as an Ealing comedy, gained them a spot on Russell Harty's BBC2 TV show Harty Goes to.... In 1986 he played Eric Birling in a production of An Inspector Calls at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, directed by Richard Wilson, giving a performance that Grevel Lindop, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, described as "outstanding". In 1985 and 1986, Grant had minor roles in eight television productions, including TV films, historical miniseries and single episodes of series. His first leading film role came in Merchant-Ivory's Edwardian drama film Maurice (1987), adapted from E. M. Forster's novel. He and co-star James Wilby shared the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival for their portrayals of lovers Clive Durham and Maurice Hall, respectively.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, he balanced small roles on television with film work, which included playing Hugh Cholmondeley, 3rd Baron Delamere in the BAFTA Award-nominated White Mischief…