Hugh Grant: ‘It’s perfectly fine to hate me but the Press went too far’

HE KNEW his lines and was prepared for a performance that he had long wished to deliver. Hugh Grant, star of films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, yesterday took to the witness stand at the Leveson Inquiry, to tackle what he viewed as the villainous tabloid Press.

In an epic testimony that lasted longer than any of his movies, he accused the Mail on Sunday of hacking his phone, journalists of illicitly obtaining information from his medical records and paparazzi photographers of intimidating the mother of his baby daughter.

While Lord Justice Leveson began by thanking him for his time and assuring him that, should his testimony prove to be upsetting, he could have a break without first having to shout “cut”, the actor proved to be a picture of confidence. During his testimony, he insisted: “It is perfectly fine to hate me, That is what I expect in this country.”

And he claimed: “I’ve never had a good name. I’m the man who was arrested with the prostitute and the film still made lots of money.”

Dressed in a navy blue suit and tie, Mr Grant began by telling the inquiry that the Mail on Sunday may have hacked his phone – the first time he has linked a paper not owned by Rupert Murdoch to the illegal practice.

Mr Grant explained that he could not think of any other way in which the paper got the story in 2007 that his relationship with Jemima Khan, his then girlfriend, was on the rocks, allegedly because of his late night phone calls with a “plummy-voiced” studio executive from Warner Brothers. Mr Grant told Lord Justice Leveson about the “bizarre, leftfield” story and said he would “love to hear the [Mail on Sunday’s] explanation”.

He said that he had not made the allegation in public before but said he had been preparing documents and going through his “trials and tribulations” when the “penny dropped”.

He said the story was untrue and that he had not been able to think “for the life of me” what the source of the story could be.

The only explanation he could think of was that messages had been left on his phone by an executive’s assistant, who had a voice which could be described as “plummy”. He said: “I was preparing these statements, going through these trials and tribulations. Then the penny dropped.”

He added: “I would love to hear what the [Mail on Sunday’s] explanation of that is, if it wasn’t phone hacking.”

In April 2007, Mr Grant accepted undisclosed libel damages over claims that his relationship with Ms Khan was destroyed by a flirtation with a film executive – and his conduct over Liz Hurley’s wedding. The settlement of Mr Grant’s legal actions over articles in the Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mail in February 2007 was announced at the High Court in London.

During two-and-a-half hours of testimony, Mr Grant, by turns charming and censorious, described years of tabloid pursuit that began after his breakthrough hit Four Weddings and a Funeral in 1994.

Incidents included a mysterious break-in at his flat – when nothing was stolen – at abour the time of his arrest in Los Angeles. A detailed description of the apartment later appeared in a tabloid newspaper. “The front door had been shoved off its hinges. Nothing had been stolen, which was weird,” said Mr Grant.

“Shortly after that, a detailed account of what the interior of my flat looked like appeared in one of the papers. I remember thinking, ‘Who told them that? Was that the burglar, or was it the police?’”

He also said an article published earlier this year in the Sun and Daily Express about his visit to a hospital emergency room was “a gross intrusion of my privacy”.

He said: “I think no-one would expect their medical records to be made public or to be appropriated by newspapers for commercial profit. That is fundamental to our British sense of decency.”

Mr Grant said he experienced further press intrusion over his relationship with Chinese actress Tinglan Hong, who recently gave birth to his daughter.

The News of the World published a front-page story headlined “Hugh’s Secret Girl” in April which featured pictures taken with a telephoto lens without the couple’s knowledge, the inquiry heard.

Mr Grant said he visited Ms Hong in hospital in London the day after the baby was born in late September.

He told the hearing: “I had been very reluctant to be present at the birth because of the danger of a leak from the hospital bringing this Press storm down on the mother of my child and what was about to be my child.

“So, I had actually made a plan with the mother not to visit at all, but to visit when she got home from hospital a few days later. She was very happy with that plan. She had her parents there and she had my female cousins there.

“But actually on the day after the birth I couldn’t resist a quick visit. I thought I was going to try and get away with it. I went, had a look, it was very nice.

“But the day after that, I think it was, the phone calls started, from the Daily Mail in this case, saying ‘We know about Tinglan having had the baby, we know about Hugh having visited, we know what name she checked in under, we’re going to write this story’. So all my fears about the leak seemed to have been justified.”

The inquiry heard that the Daily Mail did not run an article about the birth of Mr Grant’s child until the story was broken by an American magazine.

But the actor said: “I think the reason they didn’t publish it was because they would not have looked good to have published it merely on leaked information from a hospital, which is unethical.”

Mr Grant had initially refused to confirm that the baby was his, but earlier this month released a statement acknowledging it.

He told the inquiry that the statement – intended in part to rebuff claims he had “jilted” Ms Hong, with whom he remains friendly – had been composed during a phone call with his publicist while he was on a film set in Germany.

“It was not ideal circumstances,” Mr Grant said. “I was dressed as a cannibal at the time.”

Last night, the Mail on Sunday said that it “utterly refuted” the suggestion that it had hacked Mr Grant’s phone. A spokesman said information had come from a freelance journalist, who had spoken to a “source”.

And a spokesman for the Daily Mail said it “unequivocally denies Hugh Grant’s allegation that it secured information about the birth of his child from a source at the hospital.

“In fact, the information came from a source in his showbusiness circle more than two weeks after the birth.” The newspaper said it had behaved with “total journalistic propriety”.

As Mr Grant prepared to leave, he assured the journalists covering the inquiry that he did not wish to see them redundant. “I’m the reverse of a muzzler; I don’t want to see the end of popular print journalism,” he said.