In 1995 Hugh Grant made the headlines of all the media and it was not because of the success or failure of any of his films.
The images of the actor arrested by the Los Angeles police after being caught in his car with Divine Brown, a prostitute who was practicing fellatio, went around the world and marked a before and after not only in Grant's life , whose acting career was in full swing, but also in Hollywood history, which will always keep him in his memory.
Now, almost 26 years later, the
Nothing Hill
interpreter
has told that he was unfaithful to his then partner, Liz Hurley, with this sex worker to solve the frustrations that had caused his last performance that would soon see the light.
In a new interview on
Marc Maron's
WTF
podcast
, the British star has admitted that the discomfort she felt after seeing her Hollywood debut film
Nine Months
was what prompted her to turn to the services of Divine Brown who, by the way. , He knew how to profit from the scandal and ended up abandoning prostitution and earning millions of dollars.
“The movie was about to come out, and I had a bad feeling about it.
I went to see a screening.
The whole cast was brilliant, but my performance was so atrocious that I was not in a good mood, "said the interpreter, now 60 years old.
Unlike his hunches, the movie, which was released two weeks after the incident, helped catapult him to stardom.
"In the end the movie did well at the box office, in fact, I think it did quite well, and that's all that really matters to Hollywood," he added.
The film, directed by Chris Columbus and in which Julianne Moore and Robin Williams participated with Grant, ended up raising first 12.5 million dollars in the United States and finally almost 140 million worldwide.
Hugh Grant and Divine Brown were arrested near Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, after the actor paid the prostitute $ 50 to practice his services aboard a brand new BMW.
Grant was then sentenced to pay a $ 1,000 fine and to attend an AIDS education program.
In his later statement, the
Love Actually
actor
was contrite: “I did something completely crazy last night.
I've hurt the people I love and I've embarrassed the people I work with.
For both, I am very sorry ”.
Following the scandal, Hugh Grant and Elizabeth Hurley, who formed one of the most iconic couples of the 1990s, remained together for several more years, before ending their 13-year courtship in 2000. They remain close friends today and the actor He is godfather to Hurley's 18-year-old son Damian, whose businessman father Steve Bing took his own life last year.
Although it is the first time that he is so sincere and openly talks about what happened, Grant had already mentioned the scandal on other occasions, such as when in 2016 he admitted in an interview on CBS News that at that time he was a “very naughty".
"I was drunk.
And yes, it was a regrettable situation, "he said then without wanting to go into more details.
This is one of the biggest scandals in Hollywood history, but not the only one in which Hugh Grant has been implicated.
Ten years later, in 2005, the actor was once again the protagonist on this occasion as one of the victims of the case of the illegal wiretapping of the Sunday newspaper
News of the World
(NoW).
A matter that reached the courts and that has lasted until 2018, when the interpreter was compensated with 110,000 euros in damages that the actor will donate to the group of activists Hacked Off, creators of a campaign against illegal interceptions.
