Hollywood star Hugh Grant definitely got everyone’s attention after he recently let it slip that he has considered embarking on a new career in politics
During the 63-year-old actor’s interview with Entertainment Weekly, the “Notting Hill” star said he was never “interested in politics at all until” he was about 50.
“I sneered at politics, and then, I found myself campaigning about the abuse of power in the British tabloid press here in the U.K,” Grant explained. “I spent an awful lot of time in the House of Parliament lobbying politicians and got to know them up close and see what weird specimens they were or became in the course of their careers.”
“Very often starting with conviction and passion and ending up a couple of decades later, these slightly monstrous professionals of the political game of snakes and ladders,” the “Wonka” star continued. “Their priorities were 1.) their own career, 2.) their own party and smashing the other party, and somewhere, way down the list, was what’s good for the country.”
The British actor admitted, after years of playing a politician in movies like “Love Actually,” it “has crossed my mind” to get into politics.
“But what I really see close up is that it’s almost impossible to actually get anything done,” Grant said. “It’s just impossible. You’ve got to bring so many people with you.”
He said whenever the “subject” of running comes up, his wife Anna Elisabet Eberstein’s mother, Susanne Eberstein, who previously served as a member of the Swedish parliament, tells him don’t do it.
“She just says, ‘Don’t. You have to water down everything. It’s all horse trading. And nowadays the incoming abuse is unthinkable,’” Grant explained.
“In 2019, the last general election here in the U.K., I did mount a tiny campaign to try and persuade people to vote tactically because in our electoral system, this was the way to prevent Boris [Johnson] and company getting back into power,” he added. “I campaigned in a few marginal constituencies for whoever was the closest rival to the Conservative candidate. Actually, I did very badly. We lost in every single constituency.”
The “Two Weeks Notice” star said during his brief political stint he learned “you have to be either very brave or insane to go into politics in the digital age.”
In “Love Actually,” Grant played a single Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the popular 2003 romantic comedy, alongside a host of stars such as Emma Thompson, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, and Keira Knightley. More recently, the actor played the leader of the opposition in the political satire miniseries “The Regime,” CNN noted.
