Hugh Grant Says His Oompa Loompa Role Was ‘Challenging for My Wife’

Hugh Grant thinks his career choices have been rocky for his wife Anna Eberstein.

When the actor, 64, appeared on the Nov. 13 episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers to promote Heretic, he joked that his string of goofy, bizarre and villainous roles in recent years have proven “challenging” for his wife of six years.

After Grant said he plays “a strange, misshapen, weirdo” in Heretic, host Seth Meyers displayed photos of the actor as the cereal mascot Tony the Tiger in Unfrosted and as an orange Oompa Loompa in 2023’s Wonka.

“See, again, I think those are challenging for my wife,” Grant joked. “Her last husband — she was married before — was a ski champion, and now she’s married to that.”

Grant and Eberstein tied the knot in May 2018, several years after they began dating. They share three children, including son John, 12, and daughters Lulu, 8, and Blue, 6; he only revealed the names of his younger daughters publicly for the first time during an Oct. 30 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Grant also shares two children with Tinglan Hong; daughter Tabitha, 13, and son Felix, who turns 12 in December.  

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The Notting Hill actor’s jokes about Eberstein’s thoughts on his roles that deviate from his beloved rom-coms came shortly after Grant told Meyers, 50, that he in part wanted to deviate from lovable characters he portrayed that made him famous.

“There I was doing nonsense jobs for, I can’t remember, 10 years or something, and then suddenly out of the blue [Four Weddings and a Funeral] happens and I’m suddenly offered lots of lucrative and exciting work,” Grant said.

“I made the terrible mistake of thinking, well, if that’s the person they like in films, where I’m all ‘Gosh, hi, yes, I love you,’ I’ll just be like that in interviews as well. And quite rightly, on the back of that, people started to loathe me. At least, in Britain they did.” 

While Grant is embracing a villainous side of his acting — Heretic is in theaters now — he is not straying too far from rom-coms; the actor reprises his role in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, on Peacock Feb. 13.