Hugh Grant talks about doing “a lot of killing and raping” in Cloud Atlas

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

As Mike stated back in this article, I have no idea at all as to what I should expect from CLOUD ATLAS as a story, let alone when directed by the trio of Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski, and Lana Wachowski.  I’ve never read the book, but what we’ve heard from the actors about what’s going on (gender, race, and age bending) leaves me most definitely intrigued.  Well now one of the more curious pieces of casting has stepped forward to share a bit of information that I, for one, find pleasantly surprising. 

“I have six cameo parts in this strange, ambitious film,” Hugh Grant said. “I do a lot of killing and raping. I wear an awful lot of prosthetic make up, too. You probably won’t know that I am in the film! But it was a laugh. I thought before I read it that I’d turn it down, which I normally do, but I  was interested in meeting the Wachowskis because I have always admired them enormously. And they are so charming and fascinating.”  Grant went on to call all of the six characters he plays “incredibly evil,” and then shared this story from the recently-wrapped production: “I slightly called my own bluff. In one of the parts I am a cannibal, about 2000 years in the future, and I thought, ‘I can do that. It’s easy.’ And then I am suddenly standing in a cannibal skirt on a mountaintop in Germany and they are saying, ‘You know, hungry! We must have that flesh-eating, like a leopard who is so hungry…’ and I am thinking, ‘I can’t do that! Just give me a witty line!'”

Grant also called CLOUD ATLAS “as the biggest independent film of his career. ‘I have seen little bits of cut footage and it is just astonishing. I probably had 20 shooting days, and each of them is shooting their own part of the film with their own crews. It’s remarkable.'”

Grant’s co-star, Chinese actress Xun Zhou: