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And go back to doing what comes naturally. After Notting Hill comes Mickey Blue Eyes, out in August from Simian Films, the production company he and his girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley formed in 1995. In this light comedy, produced by Hurley, he plays an art auctioneer who happens to fall in love with a New York mobster's daughter (Jeanne Tripplehorn). The film allowed Grant and Hurley, in the name of research, to hang out with genuine Mob types in Brooklyn. "They really adored Elizabeth," says Grant. "They say, 'My name's Uncle Mikey, if there's anything I can do for you, anywhere in the world, you come to me.' Some of these tabloid editors here should be looking over their shoulders." And the role lets Grant hone his dazed-and-confused act. While he disputes that he has been typecast, he concedes that he is looking forward to working on the new Woody Allen film in July, in which he gets to play a villain.
Even there, though, his role is a "smoothie charmer," for onscreen and off there is no getting away from the fact that Grant was born to be the perfect dinner-party companion; he flirts, he pays attention, he jokes about his "Austin Powers teeth," he gives the term self-deprecating a whole new meaning. People forget, for instance, that before Four Weddings, he appeared in a string of what he calls "Europuddings"--but Grant is delighted to remind us. "I was always a champagne baron for some reason," he says. "I did Judith Krantz's Till We Meet Again. I was the villainous half-brother Bruno, who rapes Courteney Cox and steals all the family champagne and gives it to the Nazis--fantastic. And there's a very good one based on the Barbara Cartland novel Cupid Rides Pillion. I was the highwayman. When I'm uncomfortable in a role, my voice goes high, so it's quite amusing to see me jump out of the bushes with all my sexy gear on and say"--he squeaks--'Stand and deliver!'"
He's even happy to riff on his 12-year relationship with Hurley, the often scantily clad Valkyrie to whom he seems content to play the hapless chorus boy. "Elizabeth made me buy a house," he confesses, "and we spent two years having idiot, pretentious, criminal bozos decorate it. It's now completely hideous, and I'm quarreling with her because I don't want to live there. The shower smells of dead people; I hate it." Instead, he hangs out in their old flat around the corner. "I go there and watch the football and drink beer. But I think that's healthy, isn't it? Maybe not."
For a man publicly adored for his boyishness, it must be hard to take on the trappings of adulthood. Perhaps that is why, despite signs of a comeback, Grant still pretends he is not fully committed to acting. "There's the ever increasing prospect of just...stopping," he says. "It would be such bliss." He dreams of taking up writing again. In his lean years he wrote book reviews and comedy sketches; he even worked on a novel. "It was called Slack," he says, "and it was about someone with no job, strangely enough."
People who know Grant have heard this talk of quitting before. "He said that the first day I met him--that acting was no profession for an adult," says Curtis. "Maybe it is bull____," Grant admits, "but it is a sort of fantasy." It is also the one thing that audiences would probably never forgive.