Hugh Grant names his four favourite movies

There are many people out there who would list a Hugh Grant movie when asked to name their favourite films of all time. There are the romantic comedy fans who revere Notting Hill and Love Actually, the slightly darker romantic comedy fans who revere Four Weddings and a Funeral and About a Boy, the fans of period dramas who can’t get enough of Sense and Sensibility and Remains of the Day, and the fans of cinema more broadly who should always, as a matter of course, pick Paddington 2.

In the interest of journalistic integrity, it’s worth noting that Grant has made a lot of terrible movies, too. No one needed to see him do a parody of himself as a commitment-phobic child psychologist in Chris Columbus’ Nine Months, and no one was asking for him to play an unhappily married witness to murder in the exhausting and utterly unfunny Marc Lawrence comedy Did You Hear About the Morgans?

Grant’s recent jailbreak from romantic comedies has been a revelation for movie fans, especially those who never gave him much credit as an actor during his stammering, eye-batting days as a bashful romantic. But when asked to name his favourite movies, he didn’t go for Paddington 2 or Heretic or Florence Foster Jenkins, he went for a lineup that is about as eclectic as it gets. 

“Ah, well, The Sound of Music,” he told Letterboxd. “The Zone of Interest – Unbelievable. Maybe Finding Nemo. Oh, it’s just heartbreaking. Probably Blue from [Krzysztof] Kieślowski’s [Three Colors] trilogy.”

This wasn’t the first time Grant spoke of his love for The Sound of Music. In fact, he’s expressed unabashed adoration for it countless times over the years, telling GQ in 2023 that it is, without question, his favourite movie of all time. “It’s impeccable, the film is impeccable,” he said. “And there’s not a single moment that I don’t love.”

His list may be the first time that Finding Nemo and The Zone of Interest have ever appeared in the same paragraph, but the emotional heft of the animated Pixar classic will never lose its weight and The Zone of Interest is an Oscar-winning triumph that might have been in Grant’s mind since it had been so recently released.

As for 1993’s Three Colors: Blue, it is the first instalment of Kieślowski’s trilogy, followed by Three Colors: White in 1994 and Three Colors: Red in 1995. Based on the colours of the French flag, each film loosely explores one part of the country’s motto, “liberty, equality, fraternity”. Blue stars Juliette Binoche as a woman who isolates herself following the death of her husband and daughter. It won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and Binoche picked up multiple accolades, including the Volpi Cup for ‘Best Actress’ at Venice, the Cesár Award for ‘Best Actress’, and a nomination for a Golden Globe.  

Grant is a self-proclaimed superfan of the director, and remembered a moment he ran into him at an awards ceremony. “I was so starstruck,” he recounted, “I couldn’t think of anything to say… except ‘What are you up to?’” Not surprisingly, given this exchange, the two have never worked together.

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