Did Hugh Grant Wear Makeup In "A Very English Scandal" To Make Him Look Older?

Halfway through 2018, it already seems clear who some of the leading contenders will be in the thespian categories of next year'due south Bafta and RTS awards: Bridegroom Cumberbatch and Anthony Hopkins for their championship roles in Patrick Melrose and Rex Lear, and Ben Whishaw and Hugh Grant every bit Norman Scott and Jeremy Thorpe in A Very English Scandal.

Grant would be about tipsters' pick to have dwelling house the trophies. This is a remarkable accomplishment. While Cumberbatch, Hopkins and Whishaw are often the names inside the gilded envelopes ripped open at TV honor ceremonies, Grant'southward last large British TV office, earlier taking on the part of the allegedly homicidal Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe in A Very English language Scandal, was over 25 years agone. In 1993, he appeared in a production of Thomas Middleton'due south The Changeling, in the BBC theatre-on-Idiot box series Performance.

The reason for Grant's quarter-century absence from the medium was his flick-star career, especially as Richard Curtis's preferred lead man in 4 Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Beloved Actually.

Merely, whereas some screen stars who take a Idiot box role – such as Frances McDormand in Olive Kitteridge or Matthew McConaughey in True Detective – simply fancy the chance to exercise classy, long-class material in between Hollywood projects, Grant was widely perceived to be in trouble cinematically.

His movie piece of work in the past decade had suggested someone now too old and contemptuous to atomic number 82 romcoms such as Music and Lyrics (2007) and The Rewrite (2014), merely notwithstanding too associated with stuttering lovers to be taken seriously when playing 5 roles in the postmodern sci-fi mega-bomb Cloud Atlas (2012). And then, his performance equally Thorpe is a total reputational turnaround, ane of the finest ever achieved by an actor.

"The relevance of Grant'due south own sexual adventure-taking is that information technology reveals a darker streak in his personality, one that is more interesting than he has generally been allowed to announced on screen"

The transformation was accomplished through a combination of reanimated talent and lookalike luck. In a screen industry ever more than dominated by bio-dramas, an role player'southward face and physique can suddenly become their fortune.

For example, Toby Jones is a neat screen role player simply would require unfeasible cosmetic and camera trickery to convince equally Thorpe.

Still, every bit shortly as information technology was reported that Grant would play Thorpe, the casting immediately made sense. They shared non only Oxford-educated voices and the same tall, thin build (the men'south ectomorphic frames and long faces brought even closer by dieting and make-upwardly), but psychology, too.

The events that led to Grant beingness charged with lewd behaviour with a sex worker on Dusk Boulevard in 1995 are now far past the statute of limitations for whatever result they should take on the actor'due south profession and reputation.

Yet, I mention the incident considering there must be a suspicion that having once jeopardised his career for a sex human activity was a useful reference point for an histrion playing Thorpe.

Hugh Grant with co-star Ben Whishaw in
*A Very English language Scandal* (Credit: BBC)

His covert encounters with men – at a time when gay sex was first illegal and then only unpalatable to much of the electorate – resulted in allegations that, in order to protect his parliamentary career, he had conspired to have his former lover Norman Scott murdered. Information technology was an accusation that an Erstwhile Bailey jury, firmly nudged in that direction by the judge, rejected in 1979 – but which nearly viewers of A Very English Scandal are likely to accept concluded to be true.

The relevance of Grant'due south ain sexual take chances-taking is that it reveals a darker streak in his personality, one that is more interesting than he has generally been allowed to announced on screen.

As is oft the case, the persona that made the actor famous – the bumbling public schoolhouse male child in Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Colina – turns out not to be the best utilize of his talent.

Grant is all-time when dark, and not even necessarily in films aimed at grown-ups.

The remarkable renaissance that A Very English language Scandal represents was, in hindsight, signalled past his previous role, an enjoyable turn in Paddington 2 as Phoenix Buchanan, a vain and villainous role player.

As Grant's cinematic part earlier that was St Clair Bayfield, a failed Shakespearean actor, in Florence Foster Jenkins, in that location was reason to fear that his screen career may take been dwindling to knowing, self-parodic cameos.

"The greatness of the portrayal is the manual of the calculations and contradictions happening inside Thorpe's head"

But these usefully highlighted a different side of his style, which Stephen Frears, the managing director of Florence Foster Jenkins likewise every bit A Very English language Scandal, utilised fully as Thorpe, another strange theatrical of sorts, though one minus an Equity carte du jour. One of Thorpe's sometime lovers described him, in Michael Bloch'southward 2014 biography, as a "ham actor". This suggests that Grant'southward rediscovery as a good actor has now, paradoxically, featured a trio of bad ones.

The biggest tribute to Grant's operation in A Very English Scandal is that the obligatory coda, in which news footage of the real figure is shown, does non have the usual deflationary consequence.

The actor perfectly reproduces every vocal and concrete tic, down to the moving ridge – and what follows it. Both arms are raised and so suddenly crossed. This was a gesture Thorpe curiously shared with another disgraced leader of the 1970s, President Richard Nixon.

For an player, that is just "living Tussaud's" stuff. The greatness of the portrayal is the transmission of the calculations and contradictions happening within Thorpe's caput.

Russell T Davies'due south scripts for A Very English language Scandal oftentimes sought to position the protagonist equally a victim of historical discrimination against homosexuals, forced into two "lavender marriages". Expression of his true sexuality would have wrecked his loftier political ambitions.

Davies gives Thorpe a line virtually how he volition consummate his marriages "through gritted teeth" and subsequently plead tiredness at bedtime.

This is a reasonable reading, particularly from the writer of Queer every bit Folk, but biographies and contemporary reports of Thorpe'due south life advise the culling possibility that he was an enthusiastic bisexual, who enjoyed the gamble created by satisfying both sides of his libido.

And the suggestion in Bloch's biography that Thorpe may have ordered the murder of another man who knew too much – a erstwhile lover, Henry Upton, who mysteriously disappeared at ocean in 1957 – raises the possibility that he was psychotic. Grant convincingly suggests a man who would accept been capable of well-nigh annihilation in pursuit of his sexual desires and political ambitions.

A late-career office that fits an actor exactly can sometimes be an opening that closes off options: Nigel Hawthorne and F Murray Abraham were often hard to cast later the perfection of their piece of work as Sir Humphrey in Yes Minister and Salieri in Amadeus.

Information technology seems dissimilar in Grant's case, though, because this is a second breakthrough and represents an escape from earlier typecasting. He surely couldn't go dorsum to playing the posh honey interest in Richard Curtis films, merely almost would run into that every bit a good thing. If that interesting quintet of performances in Cloud Atlas were premiered now, it would, perhaps, be improve received.

A well-known screen director, who declines to exist named for making a negative comparison with another actor, says: "Watching Grant in A Very English Scandal, I kept imagining him in the role played by Hugh Laurie in The Night Director. I think he'd take been much more convincing as that satanic figure.

"Grant wouldn't have been idea of for that part two years ago, just now he would be. So, the large modify volition exist in the range of what he tin do."

Before that, he should ensure he has a clean tuxedo for the Idiot box awards flavor.