[21] He ran a carpet business and pursued hobbies such as golf and watercolour painting; he raised his family in Chiswick, West London, where the Grants lived next to Arlington Park Mansions on Sutton Lane.

[45][46] Bored with small acting parts, Grant created a sketch-comedy group called The Jockeys of Norfolk, a name taken from Shakespeare's Richard III, with friends Chris Lang and Andy Taylor.

In 1992 he appeared in Roman Polanski's film Bitter Moon, portraying a fastidious and proper British tourist who is married but finds himself enticed by the sexual hedonism of a seductive French woman and her embittered, paraplegic American husband.

[8] Released in 1994 with Grant as the protagonist, Four Weddings and a Funeral became the highest-grossing British film to date with a worldwide box office in excess of $244 million,[6] making him an overnight international star.

His interviewers commented frequently on his romantic attractiveness, a modern matinée idol, blue eyed, very good looking in a classically English way, with his floppy hair and charming smile, his impeccable manners leavened by the occasional expletive".

[65] Before the release of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Grant had reunited with its director Mike Newell for the tragicomedy An Awfully Big Adventure (1995), which was labelled a "determinedly off-beat film" by The New York Times.

Critic Roger Ebert wrote, "It shows that he has range as an actor"[67] but the San Francisco Chronicle disapproved on grounds that the film "plays like a vanity production for Grant".

The Washington Post called it a "grotesquely pandering caper" and singled out Grant's performance, as a child psychiatrist reacting unfavourably to his girlfriend's unexpected pregnancy, for his "insufferable muggings".

"[74] The film provided both its stars a chance to satirise the woes of international notoriety, most noted of which was Grant's turn as a faux-journalist who sits through a dull press junket with what The New York Times called "a delightfully funny deadpan".

[78] Small Time Crooks starred Grant, in the words of film critic Andrew Sarris, as "a petty, petulant, faux-Pygmalion art dealer, David, [who] is one of the sleaziest and most unsympathetic characters Mr. Allen has ever created".

The BBC thought Grant delivered an "immaculate comic performance",[84] and with an Academy Award-nominated screenplay, About a Boy was determined by The Washington Post to be "that rare romantic comedy that dares to choose messiness over closure, prickly independence over fetishised coupledom, and honesty over typical Hollywood endings".

[87] Released a day after the blockbuster Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, About a Boy was a more modest box office grosser than other successful Grant films, making all of $129 million globally.

"[85] The New York Observer concluded: "[The film] gets most of its laughs from the evolved expertise of Hugh Grant in playing characters that audiences enjoy seeing taken down a peg or two as a punishment for philandering and womanising and simply being too handsome for words-and with an English accent besides.

[92] Roger Ebert claimed that "Grant has flowered into an absolutely splendid romantic comedian" and has "so much self-confidence that he plays the British prime minister as if he took the role to be a good sport".

[93] Film critic Rex Reed, on the contrary, called his performance "an oversexed bachelor spin on Tony Blair" as the star "flirted with himself in the paroxysm of self-love that has become his acting style".

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, "Grant strikes precisely the right note with regard to Alex's career: He's too intelligent not to be a little embarrassed, but he's far too brazen to feel anything like shame.

[108] In 2016, Grant played St. Clair Bayfield, partner of the title character, in the film Florence Foster Jenkins, directed by Stephen Frears and starring Meryl Streep.

[126] In 2018, Grant returned to television screens after 25 years, as Jeremy Thorpe opposite Ben Whishaw as Norman Josiffe in the BBC One miniseries A Very English Scandal, which marked his second collaboration with director Stephen Frears.

Digital Spy's review stated that "There's always been a bit of the devil in Grant's best turns, and in Thorpe, a man with a fully-realised dark side, he's found his richest part in years".

[139][140] Film critic Caryn James said Grant has the "richest part" and added, "He sharply defines Jonathan as a slippery character, and walks the line expertly to keep us off guard.

"[153] In 2024, Grant had a guest appearance in Stephen Frears-directed, Kate Winslet-starring HBO limited series The Regime, for which he was nominated for Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actor.

[163] The film has received a positive reception and The Hollywood Reporter review commented: "Grant, who scores many of the script’s best lines, brings a shot of mischievous vitality every time he’s onscreen, as well as some poignant commentary on mortality and lasting connection during a sobering juncture for Daniel.

Remarking upon his romantic comedy star era, some film critics, such as Roger Ebert, have defended the limited variety of his performances, while some others have dismissed Grant as a "one-trick pony".

[172] Claudia Puig of USA Today celebrated this transformation with the observation that finally "gone [were] the self-conscious 'Aren't I adorable' mannerisms that seemed endearing at the start of his film career but have grown cloying in more recent movies".

The company's newspaper, Today, which ceased publication the following November, had falsely claimed that Grant verbally abused a young extra with a "foul-mouthed tongue lashing" on the set of The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain.

"[195] On 27 June 1995, Grant was arrested in Los Angeles, California, in a police vice operation near Sunset Boulevard for receiving oral sex in a public place from Hollywood prostitute Divine Brown.

[209] In April 2011, Grant published an article in the New Statesman titled "The Bugger, Bugged"[11] about a conversation (following an earlier encounter) with Paul McMullan, a former journalist and paparazzo for News of the World.

In unguarded comments which were secretly taped by Grant, McMullan alleged that editors at the Daily Mail and News of the World, particularly Andy Coulson, had ordered journalists to engage in illegal phone tapping and had done so with the full knowledge of senior British politicians.

[244] In 2011, the BBC apologised after Grant made an offhand joke about homosexuality and rugby when he was invited into the commentary box during coverage of an England v Scotland game at Twickenham Stadium.

[253] Since his mother's death in 2001, Grant has worked as a fundraiser and ambassador for Marie Curie Cancer Care, promoting the charity's annual Great Daffodil Appeal on several occasions.