The secret behind why Hugh Grant is such a good villain.

Hereticsthe twisted new A24 horror film from writer-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, starts with a question: Why would two young female Mormon missionaries enter the house of a sketchy older man despite strict instructions never to do so unless a woman is present present? And why would they stay when it’s obvious to everyone in the audience screaming at them to get out that he’s an unstable creep? The film’s answer is simple: because he’s Hugh Grant.

Grant entered film as an object of desire. In the Merchant Ivory production Mauricebased on a gay romance that EM Forster wrote in 1913 but kept secret until after his death in 1970, Grant is as handsome as anyone has ever been on screen, with dark, liquid eyes and a pale, delicate face that could have been sculpted by a Greek master. With a shock of wild, floppy hair, Grant was alluring and mysterious – he played Lord Byron the following year Maurice– but that was first Four weddings and a funeral that he discovered the secret to his future success: playing characters who don’t realize they look like Hugh Grant. IN Four weddings and Notting HillTo name just two of the series of now classic romantic comedies that followed, women as beautiful as Andie MacDowell and Julia Roberts almost throw themselves at his feet, but he is so frail that he hardly notices. Four Weddings makes a mockery of his inability to be on time for any of its titular weddings—including, ultimately, his own—but even in movies where he’s not surrounded by alarm clocks, he exudes the energy of someone who always coming too late. If he had a signature phrase, it would be “my goodness, is to the time?”

Grant’s gift for perpetual confusion made him a rom-com ideal, dazzling but approachable, tongue-tied but pure of heart. IN Notting Hillhe overhears a group of men making crude remarks about the Hollywood movie star with whom he enjoys an unlikely flirtation, and leaps to her defense before realizing he can only stutter awkwardly to the offenders. (He calls his person from this time “Mr. Stuttery Blinky.”) But it also allows him to get away with some pretty creepy behavior, the kind we’d be less inclined to forgive if he weren’t such an endearing mess. IN Four weddingshe leaves his bride stranded at the altar and enters Love actuallyhe reassigns a subordinate when he catches her kissing another man, but we forgive him, or at least we’re supposed to, there’s no malice involved, just the romantic fumbles of a man who’s always last, who knows what he wants.

IN Bridget Jones’s Diarypublished two years later Notting HillGrant begins to let us see the sinister edge of that charm. His relentlessly cocky publishing boss begins an affair with Renée Zellweger’s publicity assistant, and while the sex is great and he’s clear about his intentions to keep it casual, he fails to mention that he’s engaged to another woman. He comes running back after his fiancee dumps him, pledges his love and allows that he is “a horrible disaster with a posh voice and a bad character”, a disarming admission that would have reduced the audience of Grant’s earlier films to willing nonsense. But for Bridget Jones, it doesn’t stick. His character may finally be looking for love after a lifetime of tomcatting, but he’s not ready and he’s not worth the trouble.

Although Grant wouldn’t step away from the rom-com for several more years – he’s only done one since 2009, though a new Bridget Jones is slated for next year – his willingness to play an unabashed cad showed him moving beyond the anxious but irresistible lead, giving us the first moves into what we could call his villainous era. The 2012s Cloud Atlas, a centuries-spanning sci-fi epic in which Grant taps back his eyelids to play the sexually abusive manager of a Korean diner felt like a scorched-earth farewell to his likable era—he credits the film with allowing him to “enjoy playing” again – but that was only in 2017 Paddington 2 that he decided what to do next: play villains with gusto.

Phoenix Buchanan, the over-the-top actor whose devious machinations land Paddington in prison, sees himself as we used to see Hugh Grant: bursting with charisma, able to put anything past anyone with a cheerful frown. But Phoenix is ​​long past his prime, which wasn’t all that impressive to begin with – even though his villain’s lair is filled with memories of past glories, the only evidence we see of him plying his trade is selling pet food in a tattered dog costume. It’s a risky part in a sense, a star once known for his good looks channeling his own vanity — one modeled so closely on his portrayals that in early drafts the film’s writers simply called the character “Hugh Grant” – but Grant dives in without his own vanity, treating his by now familiar mannerisms like the worn shit of an aging hack. And it’s a pleasure.

In the 2020 miniseries The regretGrant stars opposite Nicole Kidman as one half of a wealthy Manhattan couple who seem like the perfect husband and father until a young woman he’s been having an affair with turns up dead. The series plays on his wife’s, and our, difficulty in accepting that someone so harmless-looking would viciously crush his mistress’s skull with a hammer, keeping us in a state of suspended disbelief until it confirms that he has done just that. There is something particularly chilling about the way we are forced to confront our own reluctance to accept a terrible truth about someone we think we know who could not possibly have done such a thing.

Once America’s sweetheart, Grant has become its heel. IN Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieveshe is the thief without honor, a treacherous rogue who betrays his former comrades with a laugh. IN Wonkahe takes on the role of a jaundiced Oompa Loompa named Lofty, a grumpy helper who scowls instead of whistling as he works. (He used the film’s press tour to talk about how much he hated playing the part(but his displeasure was so dryly funny that it’s hard to tell if it was on par or just an extension of the bit.) Both movies made hundreds of millions at the box office, proving that audiences love to hate Grant just as much, as they once upon a time loved to love him.

Grant’s character i HereticsMr. Reed, based on the same assumption. He greets the young women at his door, sisters Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Paxton (Chloe East), as a grumpy old man, assuring them that it is safe to enter because his wife is just in the other room and bake a pie. When they realize there is no wife (and no pie), they are locked up, but Mr. Reed continues to pour on the charm, even as he reveals that they may never make it out alive. In a motley cardigan and orange-tinted glasses, his endearing tuft of hair now a greasy mess, Mr. Reed more confidence than he could ever have earned—he’s a guy who just thinking he looks like Hugh Grant. And he has more physical threats in store for them, although the greatest torture he inflicts on his young captives is a lecture on the history of organized religion, delivered with smug superiority by a self-proclaimed expert who has just spent a few hours scroll Reddit. Grant makes the game, which also includes a Radiohead song and the story of the board game Monopoly, both engrossing and off-putting. And he punctuates his ramblings with a gesture instantly familiar to anyone familiar with his high rom-com era, a kind of apologetic smile with narrowing eyes that seem to whisper, Can you blame me?

In a performance at Jimmy Kimmel live last week, Grant performed iconic horror film lines as if they were romantic-comedy dialogue, adding a delighted laugh to “Hello, Clarice” and cooing “The power of Christ compels you” as if it were a pickup line. But his performance in Heretics suggests that there is less daylight between the genres than one might assume. Like a bubbly rom-com lead, a horror movie villain often uses the appearance of vulnerability to make his prey lower their guard. (Think Buffalo Bill has a fake cast.) Grant can argue that he left rom-coms behind because he’s “too old and fat and ugly” for the genre, but he clearly relishes the opportunity to give his old audience a little shock. When an interviewer at Heretics‘s premiere asked if it was difficult to leave a role as Mr. Reed on the set, Grant said, “It’s still very much me—me killed three people this afternoon.” And then he added with a familiar wink, “I feel terrible to.”