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No more Mr Nice Guy: how Hugh Grant transformed himself into an edgy national treasure

In Richard Curtis and Bridget Jones romcoms he was everyone’s favourite foppish Englishman. Now the actor shows his steel as a menacing villain in a new horror movie

But without formal drama training or a background in the theatre, Grant, even by the neurotic standards of most actors, nurtured a deep streak of professional insecurity – he has complained of being paralysed by panic attacks when filming. A leading figure in Hacked Off, the campaign group that seeks reform of press self-regulation, Grant this year, having accused the paper of hiring a private investigator to break into his flat and bug him. He could probably write a wonderfully scabrous exposé of the film world and himself in the tradition of David Niven and Rupert Everett, but it’s far more likely he’ll concentrate on the job in hand: gradually occupying the position of a national treasure.

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