LONDON, Jan 25: British actor Hugh Grant, famous for playing fancy-free cads in films like `Four Weddings and a Funeral’ or `Bridget Jones’, admitted on Thursday he had finally `settled down’ with socialite Jemima Khan.
Speaking at a press conference for his new movie, `Music and Lyrics’, a romantic comedy about an over-the-hill rock star who eventually finds love in mid-life, Grant said that his relationship with Khan was rock solid.
“It's true that I have taken a long time to settle down,” the 46-year-old star said. “My life is very nice now.” For the last three years Grant has been dating Jemima Khan, the ex-wife of cricketer Imran Khan and daughter of the late Eurosceptic tycoon Sir James Goldsmith.
Grant, who recently returned as scoundrel Daniel Cleaver in “Bridget Jones:
The Edge of Reason,” said he liked starring in romantic comedies.
“I quite like playing a playboy or lothario, but that's not the aspect of any of those parts that attracted me particularly,” he said.
“I remember doing Bridget Jones and finding it strange that women are drawn to a character that is that much of a bastard, but women are very inexplicable.” Grant insisted that he did not fit the bill as a rock star. “I have many fantasies but the rock star thing hasn't been one of them. It never has been,” he said.
“I've been teased by my friends -- “Puppet on a String” and “Godspell,” that's about the whole of my music collection,” he added, referring to two less-than-cool musical nuggets from 1960s and 70s. “In many ways I've been shockingly miscast in this film.” Though he sings and plays the piano in the film, he admitted: “You can literally bark like a dog and after computers work on it, it sounds like Pavarotti.”
His latest co-star Drew Barrymore, 30, confirmed that she had split from `The Strokes’ star Fabrizio Moretti after almost five years together -- but said her passion for music helped her in the film.
“I've collected records, been to loads of concerts and I did date a musician so I was in that world. But I didn't really draw on my personal life experiences for the part,” she said.
Grant, despite his improving love life, confessed that he was miserable, saying: “I don't know what's wrong with me, literally everything annoys me.
“If I'm writing a text message and I have to wait because there are three letters on the same button, I'm almost in despair with rage,” said Grant, who was recently spotted seething while waiting for his chauffeur to arrive.—AFP
