Hugh Grant is one of the most celebrated actors in Hollywood, and his perfect combination of wit and charm only makes it more understandable why. Needless to say, his very charming personality and physical features are also the reason why a lot of the roles he has donned have been in rom-coms. But even through those rom-coms, Grant has displayed quite a bit of action.
However, one time, this display of action in a similar ruthless manner as Tom Cruise almost ended up killing him. This happened in the iconic film that set him up as the King of rom-coms and is still regarded as a masterpiece, Four Weddings and a Funeral. But that isn’t the only surprising fact, because Grant was actually never the first choice to play the protagonist in that movie!
Hugh Grant Almost Killed Himself While Shooting Four Weddings and a Funeral
Though Tom Cruise is widely hailed as the ultimate action star in Hollywood after all the nail-biting stunts he has performed by himself to date without losing his life, someone else, too, once performed an epic action sequence that almost cost him his life.
This someone else was none other than Hollywood’s very own favorite Hugh Grant, who quite literally put his life on the line while shooting as the fan-beloved Charles in the all-time-best critically acclaimed film from 1994, Four Weddings and a Funeral.
The scene in the talk is the opening scene of the movie, where Grant’s Charles and his best friend Scarlett (Charlotte Coleman) are late to a wedding, and on the way, nearly crash into a truck while reversing the car to take the correct route to the place where they were headed.
As filmmaker Mike Newell shared in an interview with The Guardian:
“That scene on the motorway, for some reason, Hugh was actually driving. He shouldn’t have been but he was. They were within inches of backing at full speed into a truck that was coming at them.”
Needless to say, that moment most certainly felt as surreal in the film as it was in real life, considering how Newell further expressed:
“I suddenly saw the whole film collapsing in front of me, and what I had done was engineer the death of the leading man on the motorway.”
But while Grant managed to pull off such an unbelievable feat that only Cruise in the industry could be expected to, what’s even more surprising is the fact that the creative heads for the movie never really wanted to cast him in the role of the protagonist!
Hugh Grant was Never Supposed to Play Charles in the 1994 Rom-Com
While the film went on to crown him one of the most iconic kings in the rom-com industry, the truth is that Grant was never supposed to star as the lead Charles in 1994’s Four Weddings and a Funeral. And, for the record, it was writer Richard Curtis who was against his casting.
As Curtis himself shared in an interview with The Times:
“I argued hard against Hugh Grant. I had in my mind a less glamorous person because I’m a very unglamorous person. So I was thinking Jim Broadbent, Robbie Coltrane, John Gordon Sinclair. I argued for Alan Rickman.”
However, after interviewing about “70 other people” for the role, Curtis was met with the realization that “the combination you need of charm and wit to make it funny was very hard to find.” But when it came to the now-63-year-old actor: “Hugh had it instantly.”
As the writer continued to share about Grant while revealing how Newell “took the casting unbelievably seriously”:
“[Grant] gives the impression of being feckless and that he can’t act, but he worked so hard on every line.”
Now that’s a hard fact, because there has hardly been a movie where Hugh Grant didn’t absolutely nail it.
You can watch Four Weddings and a Funeral on Prime Video.
