Hugh Grant Drags His ‘Despicable’ Character From 1999's ‘Notting Hill’

Hugh Grant

Hugh Grant has a lot of thoughts about his Notting Hill character, William Thacker — and not all of them are good.

“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, 64, said while watching scenes from the 1999 movie during an interview for Vanity Fair’s “Scene Stealer.”

Julia Roberts stars alongside Grant in the romcom classic, which follows the love story between famous actress Anna Scott (Roberts) and Notting Hill bookstore owner William (Grant). The public nature of Anna’s career complicates their budding relationship, and in true rom com fashion hilarity ensues. Grant discussed the tension between the two characters when looking back at one moment in the flick specifically.

“There’s a scene in this film where she’s 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. That’s awful,” Grant said, noting that his wife, Anna Eberstein, had some questions about that particular moment.

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“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,” Grant admitted. “It’s how it was written. And I think he’s despicable, really.”

Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts

Grant did, however, praise Roberts’ performance in the film.

“All the time with Julia, as with any brilliant actress, you’re just thinking, ‘Oh Christ, they’re really good. I’m not gonna be as good as her,’” the actor recalled. “She’s 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.”

Roberts had some similar sentiments about her role in Notting Hill, which she revealed to the film’s executive producer Richard Curtis earlier this year.

“One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was your movie [Notting Hill], playing a movie actress. I was so uncomfortable!” she told Curtis for a British Vogue interview in January. “I mean, we’ve talked about this so many times, but I almost didn’t take the part because it just seemed — oh, it just seemed so awkward. I didn’t even know how to play that person.”

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Roberts said she “loathed” being dressed up as a movie star for the flick — and even opted to wear her own clothes for one iconic scene. (Yes, the one where she tells Grant, “I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.”)

“My driver, lovely Tommy, I sent him back to my flat that morning. I said, ‘Go into my bedroom and grab this, this and this out of my closet,’” she recalled. “And it was my own flip-flops and my cute little blue velvet skirt and a T-shirt and my cardigan.”