REALLY NOW, HOW LONG CAN the Western world remain obsessed with Hugh Grant's one-night tour of Sunset Strip? Three weeks ago, when the English actor was arrested in Hollywood for felonious fellatious activity with a hooker named Divine Brown, it was inevitable that late-night talk-show host Jay Leno would crack wise ("Welcome to Hollywood, or, as Hugh Grant calls it, Tonsiltown!"). But deep into July, Grant's peccadillo is still front-page news and late-night joke fodder. Last week, as he dutifully kept four talk-show dates in the U.S. to promote his new comedy, Nine Months, he was also a reluctant nightly guest on David Letterman's Top 10 list. Least Popular Summer Drink No. 6: "Hugh Grant's Backseat Snapple."
In the world beyond Hollywood, the incident was met with various questions: "Why did he do it?" "Why not?" "Hugh Grant is heterosexual?" and "Who's Hugh Grant?" If the story had any sizzle, it was because of the endearing persona the actor created in his one hit movie, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and in his eight-year amour with model Elizabeth Hurley. Snarly musclemen and tortured teen types, the Stallones and Depps, are supposed to misbehave; it's part of their public profile. But when the sinner is an Oxford grad peddling a boyish, domestic charm--the last good hope of vanishing gentility--he can expect to face the rude music. On his field trip into the Sunset night, Grant went out of character, played disastrously against type, punctured a popular illusion. As many moviegoers saw it, he didn't cheat on Hurley so much as he cheated them.
So the beleaguered Brit had every reason to suspect that, at 34, just as his name was to appear above the title of his first big Hollywood film, his career was over--that he might be the new answer to the question, "Who is buried in Grant's tomb?" Public reaction to his $60 misunderstanding could cost 20th Century Fox, distributor of Nine Months, $60 million in box-office receipts. And his mug shot might be remembered longer than all his other pictures. On Friday's Today show, Katie Couric wondered, "When do you think you'll finally stop being asked about this?" Grant's quick answer was "Never."
Now it appears that Grant may get the last laugh. It is an axiom of modern show biz that every scandal is a career move. Grant may have saved his career by going on his Summer Atonement Tour--by telling Jay and Katie how sorry he was to have hurt his family and girlfriend, by schmoozing stalwartly with Regis and Kathie Lee, by enduring Larry King's penny-Freud psychoanalyzing while admitting that his own behavior was "disloyal and shabby and goatish." And by defending Hurley (who uneasily accompanied him to the Nine Months Hollywood premiere) against the predatory voyeurism of the tabloid press. "They can go on hounding me, I suppose, as much as they like," he told Couric. "But they should damn well leave her alone."