The 10 Best Hugh Grant Movies, Ranked

There’s no pretty woman for Grant to win over in the movie that’s our pick as the best he has ever appeared in, even if Four Weddings and Notting Hill will probably always be the favourite for some of his fans. We’re talking, of course, about the pure joy that is Paddington 2. 

For Paul King’s film (which has already cemented its status as a family classic), Grant is the villain of the story, a flamboyant thief and failed actor named Phoenix Buchanan. If you saw the film at the cinema and left as soon as the credits started rolling, you probably missed out on Grant showing a whole new side of himself in an uproarious closing song-and-dance number—all the more reason give it a rewatch. 

Some Curtis fans might disagree with Notting Hill coming above Four Weddings, but that earlier film was more of an ensemble piece. In Hill, Grant is front and center—a boy standing in front of an audience, asking us to watch.

This timeless, delightful romance sees Grant play a humble but posh and extremely attractive bookseller who has an unlikely liaison with a Hollywood A-lister, played by Julia Roberts in full megawatt moviestar mode—that time when her smile seemed liable to blot out the sun. The scene in which they wake up together in bed, playing around in the sheets, is rom-com cinema at its finest.

For all he’s achieved over the years, Grant’s best-known and best-loved performances will forever be in the run of rom-com hits written by Richard Curtis that started with Four Weddings and a Funeral, where Grant heads up a gang of British friends who are constantly pulling on their best suits, piling into cars, and attending other people’s lavish weddings. 

With Grant’s halting, awkward effort to woo Andie McDowell at its heart, the film encapsulated his special brand of stuttering English charm and made him a superstar. The actor and writer went on to work together on Notting Hill and Love, Actually, but this early collaboration has its own unique and very ‘90s energy—if you’re into films like The Crying Game or The Full Monty, you’ll recognize the vibe.

About a Boy is naturally a great watch for anyone who loves seeing Grant in sad sack mode (like in Notting Hill), but it’s also a must-see for fans of Nicolas Hoult. The actor is better known these days for playing roles like Beast in the X-Men movies, Lex Luthor in Superman and a War Boy in Mad Max: Fury Road, but if you’re interested in seeing if he had the chops at 12 years of age, look no further. 

Based on Nick Hornby’s best-seller, the film follows a middle aged man who lives comfortably but listlessly off the royalties on a one-hit-wonder Christmas song that his father wrote—and that basically haunts him every year when December comes around. Looking to charm a woman, he becomes a kind of father figure to her friend’s son (Hoult). You already know what happens next. 

And while we’re on the topic of Merchant-Ivory productions, we can’t forget Grant’s startling breakthrough in the 1987 film Maurice, which won James Ivory the Silver Lion in Venice just a few months after going to the Oscars for the first time with A Room With a View—where he was nominated as Best Director.

That Maurice failed to gain the same attention from the academy probably says more about how Hollywood viewed lgbtq+ stories at that time. Regardless, the film was obviously ahead of its time and is now considered an early classic of queer cinema—up there with My Own Private Idaho and My Beautiful Laundrette. Set in the 1910s, the story follows two school friends who fall in love while attending Cambridge before going on to live closeted lives. 

Back in the 1990s, when he was fresh of face and floppy of hair, Grant was a reliable presence in the best period dramas of the era, with pivotal supporting roles in the Merchant Ivory classic, The Remains of the Day, and the brilliant Emma Thompson version of Sense & Sensibility, which was directed by the great Ang Lee.

Even though I’m a bigger fan of Remains, I’ve chosen the S&S here as Grant has a more consequential role—he plays Edward Ferrars, one of the main romantic leads. Thompson is also wonderful in both movies, but given that she won an Oscar for her screenplay for this one (alongside a nomination for best actress), it feels like the right choice for any fan of Grant and Thompson’s many collaborations.

And speaking of Grant’s dark side, nothing in his back catalogue is as freaky as this 1992 movie about a pair of conservative newlyweds (played by Grant and Kristen Scott Thomas) who wind up embroiled in the sordid past of a French couple they meet on a cruise ship.

This is an offbeat classic from a subgenre of movies that came out at that time that centered on couples vacations gone wrong. If you’re a fan of The Comfort of Strangers (Paul Schrader’s adaptation of the Ian McEwan novel) or the Harrison Ford movie, Frantic, you’ll certainly be into this one, too. 

For the dark side of Hugh Grant, let’s call them The Blundering Dreamboat Years, there are the two original Bridget Jones movies, where he’s considerably less lovable and more of a rogue, and his return to the franchise in the charming Mad About the Boy.

The movies are based on Helen Fielding’s best selling novels, which drew inspiration from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice—so, if you’re a fan of modern reimaginings of Austen’s work (like Clueless or Fire Island), you’ll probably be into it.

So what if almost every romantic relationship was built on a dubious power dynamic, Love Actually has lodged itself into the national psyche and is now as much an inescapable part of the festive season as crying to the John Lewis advert or fighting with your siblings.

Grant can certainly take some of the credit for that. Playing a Blair-like British Prime Minister, the actor brings an adorable eccentricity to the role and even finds time to be wonderfully rude to his American colleagues when necessary. If you appreciate festive British movies, like Last Christmas or The Holiday, this will be right up your street.

When Grant was at the peak of his fame, many people tried to dismiss him as just a pretty face and a cut-glass accent, but underneath that flustered exterior there has always been a seriously gifted comic performer. You can see it in his work in American romantic comedies, where even if the movie isn’t the best, Grant is always terrific in his role.

Nine Months (with Julianne Moore) and Music & Lyrics (with Drew Barrymore), weren’t too bad at all, but Two Weeks Notice (co-starring Sandra Bullock) was the pick of the bunch from that era of Hollywood roles. The story follows Bullock’s idealistic lawyer as she comes into the orbit of Grant’s billionaire real estate mogul. You can guess what happens next.