Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 8, 1994 TAG: 9404080202
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LOUIS B. PARKS HOUSTON CHRONICLE
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
The handsome, charming star of ``Four Weddings and a Funeral,'' which opens today at the Grandin Theatre, has been hearing himself compared to Cary Grant, David Niven and other stars lately. He certainly has good looks and, judging from the way women act around him, plenty of sex appeal.
Add a self-effacing, boyish sense of humor and a talent for both comedy and drama, and he's an impressive package. No wonder Hollywood agents have been plaguing him lately.
The trouble is that Grant, 33, doesn't want to be a superstar, although he does enjoy the attention he's finally getting.
``I can't say I'm averse to girls fancying me. I'm all for it,'' he admits, managing to seem genuinely embarrassed and winkingly pleased at the same time. No wonder women like him.
After his comic, romantic cameo in ``The Remains of The Day,'' and his three new films - he also stars in Roman Polanski's ``Bitter Moon,'' which is due out in late April - he's been offered ``tons'' of American scripts. But he keeps turning agents down to sign up for offbeat European films.
``I love it, of course. We all like attention, but I'm a little bit frightened of these new powerful agents,'' he said.
Grant, who spends a lot of time in Los Angeles with his girlfriend, actress Elizabeth Hurley, speaks rapidly and sounds very British. He uses words like ``keen'' and ``frightfully.''
Grant is self-mocking, with a restrained grin and a twinkle in his eye. It's clearly a ripping joke that someone's actually sitting here asking him questions about his job.
``I'm determined to try to have as much integrity as I can,'' he said. ``When they send me all these scripts I don't want to do, I feel as though they're going to get [annoyed] at me. They're a bit cross with me at the moment because I've just signed up for three films, all of them in Europe and none of them Hollywood.''
Grant prefers comedy to drama. He loves telling a funny story, like what it was like working with eccentric director-in-exile Polanski.
``It's unorthodox. In a nice, cozy, English film you turn up early in the morning and have a nice cup of tea and a doughnut.
``In a Polanski film you turn up at lunch time because he doesn't like to work in the morning, and you have a long, leisurely lunch. Rather than being offered a doughnut, you're offered'' he pauses, reconsiders, and gives a sideways look, ``some quite unusual things, really.'' He declines to elaborate.
Grant is sure to win fans with both ``Four Weddings'' and ``Sirens.'' In the latter, he's a vicar, sent to convince Australian artist Norman Lindsay to take a sacrilegious painting out of a museum show. It's the 1930s and the vicar is embarrassed, but titillated, by all the nude models running around Lindsay's home.
Grant talked the director into letting him play the vicar as someone who thinks he's modern and open-minded.
``I'd done one or two staunch Englishmen, and I didn't want to do another one. I thought I'd make my character think he was groovy, and a dangerous person to have to a sherry party. He was likely to talk about quite risky books.'' Grant grins. ``But faced with the real thing it shakes him to the roots.''
Grant felt a bit uncomfortable shooting scenes with Elle MacPherson and other models standing around nude.
``I think anyone would,'' he said. ``If you went next door and Elle and Tara [Fitzgerald] and two other girls were nude, it would be hard to talk in a normal voice and behave in a perfectly normal way.''
It's his ``Four Wedding's'' role that should endear Grant to Americans. He's a lovable ne'er-do-well, always the best man at his friends' weddings, but never wanting to marry.
He runs into Andie MacDowell at a wedding and promptly charms her socks off, so to speak. He's smitten, too, but loses her. Until the next wedding. That's when real, and funny, complications begin.
Grant had a middle-class London upbringing and an Oxford education. A student film called ``Privileged'' (1982) brought him unexpected attention.
He was offered film roles he couldn't take because he didn't have the proper work papers, so he went off to little theaters to get the experience required. This sidetracked him for several years, while he and some friends formed a comic revue group, which became a cult hit. That lead to a TV show he says was a disaster.
His real break came when he played the bisexual Clive in ``Maurice'' (1987) from the E.M. Forster novel. While it got him attention, it didn't really make his career, perhaps because he didn't follow with the right films.
Then he did the Polanski film in 1991. It was released in Europe, but not America. That made him hot again, and led to ``The Remains of the Day,'' in which he played a young journalist, and the current crop of releases.
by CNB