Hugh Grant, the British star known for romance classics such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Love Actually, says he might be a \u201chalf Indian\u201d, revealing that his father was born in India.<\/p>\n
The 65-year-old actor said his family has roots in the Indian subcontinent. \u201cMy father was a soldier. In fact, he was born in India. I had to find his birth certificate, and it was really tough. It was some obscure town in the north of India,\u201d Grant said. \u201cI guess that makes me half Indian, really,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Grant also walked the memory lane, recalling his first visit to India in 1988. The actor said he was in the country to shoot for La Nuit Bengali (The Bengali Night) in Kolkata, then Calcutta.<\/p>\n
\u201cI shot a very arty film in 1988, French, La Nuit Bengali in Kolkata and it never really had much of the release… but I thoroughly enjoyed being in Kolkata, although people said, \u2018Hugh, it is going to be a cultural shock for you.\u2019 and it was but I ended up loving it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
During his visit to the country, Grant said he met many people and fell in love with them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI sort of fell into Kolkata high society, I don\u2019t know how that happened. Because the French crew, the director, the crew, they all went very local, they started dressing local, they slept on local.<\/p>\n
\u201cI for some reason got swept up into Kolkata high society, went to cocktail parties and polo. I didn\u2019t know that life still existed anywhere. But it existed then in Kolkata. The Tollygunge Club and I went there to parties and people like Moon Moon Sen, I had a lovely time there.\u201d Adapted from the semi-autobiographical novel by Mircea Eliade, La Nuit Bengali was set in 1930s Calcutta. Starring Grant and Supriya Pathak in the lead roles, the film follows a young European engineer who becomes entangled in a forbidden romance with the daughter of the traditional Bengali family hosting him.<\/p>\n
The movie also starred cinema icons Shabana Azmi and the late Soumitra Chatterjee in pivotal roles.<\/p>\n
Grant knows his bit about Indian cinema. \u201cI have seen a bit of Satyajit Ray\u2019s films, we were using his studio and he is quite of genius. But I can\u2019t pretend I have seen a lot of Bollywood,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In his early career, years before he became a heartthrob, Grant worked in Maurice, a Merchant Ivory production, in 1987. The film was directed by acclaimed writer-director James Ivory, who produced the project with his frequent Indian collaborator and partner Ismail Merchant.<\/p>\n
Recalling his experience of working with the duo, the actor said they were a \u201cunique and wonderful pair\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey made absolutely beautiful, very brave films. And I was extremely fond of them both and it\u2019s very sad that we have now lost Ismail. Jim of course going strong and winning Oscars. Making a film (with them) was interesting in many ways, largely because they never had any money at all and what money they had that suddenly disappeared in the middle of productions.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuddenly Ismail would borrow my mother\u2019s car for the evening and she would get it back only two weeks later or they would run out of money so Ismail would do cooking, he would just cook curry for the whole cast and crew. So it was unique in that way. Everyone who ever did one of their films ended up loving them… even though they have been slightly ripped off,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hugh Grant, the British star known for romance classics such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-302354","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}