Since he became an icon of 90s romantic cinema, Hugh Grant has come a long way. After the success of films such as “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, “Notting Hill” and “Love Actually”, the British star has used his irresistible charm and innate sense of humor to cultivate the opportunity to challenge himself with increasingly challenging acting performances. Recalling among many examples the victory of the Volpi Cup in 1987 with “Maurice” by James Ivory, Grant has shown from the beginning a marked predilection for tragic and tormented roles, as well as for the brilliant and sentimental genre; and especially in the mature phase of his career he has shown that he perfectly embodies dark and mysterious characters.
Further proof of this is the release on February 27 of “Heretic”, the highly anticipated religious horror film by A24 that sees the actor play a villain with a split personality, giving us a performance never seen before. In a previous interview with Vanity Fair he revealed his strong predilection for evil characters: “The audience, for some reason, is always attracted to the bad guy: it's a fascinating thing. It must mean that, as human beings, we are fundamentally evil. The antagonist, the villain, represents the authentic truth of the human experience”. In this tense film directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, we will follow two young missionaries as they visit a man known as Mr. Reed during their evangelization work. Against all odds, the girls will end up involved in a twisted game where the stranger will put their faith to the test, forcing them to horrible trials and dangers never encountered before. Having been in theaters for just a few days, the film seems to have already won over audiences, with current global grosses of $60 million against a budget of just $10 million.
Inevitably, interest in the title depends in large part on the twisted attraction to Grant's character, about which the actor himself wanted to say more in an interview with BuzzFeed: "I've always thought that if you like your character, it helps you give a better performance and for some reason I get a perverse pleasure from being evil. In a way I think we all want to be that evil. They are fascinating characters, what happened to them? How did they end up like this? I'm interested in plumbing the depths of these people and working on their full biographies. I've read a lot about other cult leaders and serial killers, on a psychological level it's a fascinating study."
Even more interesting is the discovery that co-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods went to great lengths to get Grant to star. According to Woods, “It was a meticulously planned campaign. When we decided that Hugh Grant was the right person for the role, we basically called everyone at CAA, everyone at A24, and everyone we knew who had any connection to Hugh.” And going into detail, he continued, “We basically said, please, please, please. There’s only one person who can do this. It’s Hugh Grant. Help us convince him. Please make him understand that this is a good project for him.” An interesting detail that certainly won’t go unnoticed by true cinephiles is Grant’s imitation of the character of Jar Jar Binks from “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.” Praising his extraordinary skills in the art of improvisation, Scott Beck said of the star: “There are so many moments in the film where we would start taking and he would follow the script and then add a little word or a punctuation. In those moments, it was real and authentic and hilarious at the same time. Even though the film is in a darker genre, the performance is solid, but it also relies on his black humor.”
