Hugh Grant thinks his character from the Julia Roberts rom-com Notting Hill is “despicable” and doesn’t “have any balls”

While Hugh Grant has made his career playing the male protagonist in romantic comedies, the actor is currently showing audiences a new side of himself in the horror film Heretic. In this A24 film, he plays against type as the villain of the movie. In his review for Heretic, our own Chris Bumbray said, “It’s certainly a far cry from the stammering rom-com roles that made him such a heartthrob […] He radiates fiendishly clever intelligence, and he’s given a sadistic streak I didn’t see coming, which feels bold for a mainstream horror flick.”

As the trailer for his return to the Bridget Jones franchise drops, Grant also reflects on a past role of his where he didn’t find the character terribly affable. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Grant recently participated in Vanity Fair’s “Scene Selection,” where actors explain some of their past roles. Grant would talk about his character, William Thacker, from Notting Hill. Grant humorously says,

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?’ 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.”

In the film, Grant plays a bookstore owner who forms a relationship with Julia Roberts’ character, who’s a famous movie star. The paparazzi and tabloids are set ablaze with this new romantic entanglement and both Grant and Roberts’ characters attempt to navigate the manic situation as they try to live a normal life seeing each other. He continued, “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 — it’s how it was written. And I think he’s despicable, really.”

Grant returns for Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, where Bridget is alone once again, widowed four years ago, when Mark (Oscar winner Colin Firth) was killed on a humanitarian mission in the Sudan. She’s now a single mother to 9-year-old Billy and 4-year-old Mabel, and is stuck in a state of emotional limbo, raising her children with help from her loyal friends and even her former lover, Daniel Cleaver (Grant).