Does Hugh Grant seriously hate acting or is he just British?
That’s what the BAFTA winner’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves costar Justice Smith is still trying to figure out.
During a visit to Kyle MacLachlan‘s What Are We Even Doing? podcast, the Twin Peaks alum asked Smith if he got along with Grant during filming. “I did. Oh, I love Hugh,” the actor replied, before sharing an interesting confession from the Notting Hill star that he’s still not sure what to make of.
“When I worked with him, I was like, ‘Hugh, you know, do you still love what you do? Do you still love this?'” the actor recalled. “And he was just like, ‘No.’ He said, ‘I’ve never loved it.’ He’s like, ‘I just wanted to be famous and make a lot of money.’ And I said, ‘Really?’ He said, ‘Yeah.'”
He continued, “He is so funny. And he’s like, ‘I’ve always hated the acting part of it.’ And I was like, ‘Oh.’ But he said it with such sincerity.”
The Now You See Me: Now You Don’t star said the exchange with Grant stuck with him so much he even brought it up to costar Rosamund Pike while on set of the heist film to get the take of a fellow Brit.
“She’s like, ‘No, I’m pretty sure he’s just British.’ I’m like, ‘Are you sure?’ I think ’cause it stuck with me. I was like, ‘Oh, I guess you can be a really good actor and just want to like just do it for the fame and money.'”
MacLachlan offered his own perspective.
Paramount Pictures and eOne
“Here’s the thing about Hugh that I think I ’cause I got a vibe about him,” he shared. “I’ve known Hugh for a long time, and he has the same spiel that he does. I think the thing that is so challenging for him is that he’s such a perfectionist, and he takes it so seriously.”
Smith chimed in that he also noticed that about the Bridget Jones actor.
MacLachlan continued, “It’s like everything, he wants it to be perfect. You know, he’s got, I think, control issues, but I feel like it’s the torture of that experience as opposed to kind of letting it all go and just, you know, doing what he does. But I got to believe that he finds joy in it.”
Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.
That seemed to give the I Saw the TV Glow star some relief.
“I would hope that he was joking, but also that British humor is so dry and like sometimes hard to permeate that I don’t know ’cause he was so sincere,” Smith said. “Then I watch him…he does the work, he puts a lot of effort into what he does. We were working on a silly comedy together, and you could tell he really cares about it.”
The Sex and the City alum said he thought that was just Grant’s greatest acting trick of all: “He’s such a good actor, he’ll make you believe that he doesn’t.”
Watch Smith and MacLachlan’s full conversation above.