Hugh Grant has revealed he left a child co-star’s mother “furious” after giving her son an inappropriate gift.
The actor, who recently won rave reviews for his performance in horror film Heretic, shared the anecdote during a reunion chat with Nosferatu star Nicholas Hoult, with whom he co-starred in About a Boy when Hoult was just 11.
According to Grant, after completing work on HBO show The Undoing, which was released in 2020, he celebrated the end of production by giving the young actor who played his son a present.
In the whodunnit series, Grant plays Jonathan Fraser, the husband of Nicole Kidman’s wealthy therapist who becomes embroiled in a high-profile murder case. Their son was played by Noah Jupe who, at the time of filming, was 14.
Grant has participated in a new interview alongside Hoult, who reflected on the wrap gift he received from Grant back in 2002, saying: “You got me my first set of clubs as a wrap gift from About a Boy. Do you remember that? And you signed the golf bag as well.”
Grant, acknowledging that it was a “charming” gift, replied in the interview, organised by Vanity Fair: “It’s better than the wrap present I gave to my son on The Undoing, which was a box of cigars. His mother was furious.”
When Hoult asked how old Jupe was, Grant replied: “11”. However, Jupe, who was born in 2005, was 14 when The Undoing was filmed in 2019.
Hoult is having a busy time thanks to roles in Clint Eastwood’s Juror No 2, Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu and The Order, a gritty crime film also starring Jude Law.
In Juror No 2, Hoult reunites with Toni Collette, who played his mother in About a Boy. The Nick Hornby adaptation became a critical and box office hit, amassing global takings of $130.5m (£102.5m) from a $30m (£23.5m) budget.
