Yahoo Movies Hugh Grant Hates His ‘Love Actually’ Dance: ‘The Most Excruciating Scene Ever Committed to Celluloid’
Hugh Grant has showed off his dancing skills in several movies, from “Paddington 2” to “Music and Lyrics,” but it’s only his “Love Actually” moves that continue to haut him. To mark the 20th anniversary of “Love Actually,” Grant participated in ABC’s retrospective special “The Laughter & Secrets of Love Actually: 20 Years Later” and admitted he hates the scene in which his Prime Minister character, David, dances down the halls of his office at 10 Downing Street to The Pointer Sisters’ “Jump.”
“I saw it in the script and I thought, ‘Well, I’ll hate doing that’. I didn’t fancy doing the dance at all, let alone rehearsing it,” Grant said. “To this day, there’s many people, and I agree with them, who think it’s the most excruciating scene ever committed to celluloid. Then some people like it. But I will give myself this credit… it was my idea to have that secretary lady catch me. Genius.”
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“He kept saying ‘no’,” writer-director Richard Curtis said of filming the scene back in 2002. “I think he was hoping I’d get ill or something and we’d say, ‘Oh, well, what a shame, we’ll have to lose that dancing sequence.'”
Curtis said Grant was “grumpy” on the day of filming the scene but that there was a “contractual obligation” that prevented the actor from bowing out. The director said it was “agonizingly embarrassing” to watch Grant perform the dance on set, but added, “He’s just perfect.”
“I’m out of rhythm, by the way,” Grant added. “Especially at the beginning when I’m wiggling my ass.”
“Love Actually” is now streaming on Peacock.
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