Hugh Grant gave ‘The Undoing’ child star a box of cigars as wrap present: “His mother was furious”

[JohnS]

Hugh Grant. Quite simply, he's a guy with many interesting facets to his personality. To some, he's the perfectionist actor who has encountered conflict with other A-listers for the way he works (he's known for being cantankerous in real life - nothing like his lovable, yet bumbling boy next-door persona he perfected in the first half of his acting career), for others, his English wit and humour appeals to them. Then there's the controversies; the incident with a prostitute in 1995, the on-off relationships with women that resulted in his five children being born by two women (with two of these kids born around the same time - although, he's been married to the mother of three of his children since 2018) et al. Then again, his response against Rupert Murdoch during the phone-hacking scandal of 2013 demonstrated a man of rare intellect. Yes, he's a complex person but he's still acting in A-list roles into his mid-sixties. Only he could give a 14 year-old a box of cigars a movie wrap gift!

Hugh Grant gave ‘The Undoing’ child star a box of cigars as wrap present: “His mother was furious”

The child actor was 14 when he received the gift from Grant

By Elizabeth Aubrey - 6th December 2024

Hugh Grant - CREDIT: Photo by Gerald Matzka/Getty Images

Hugh Grant has revealed he gave the child star of The Undoing a box of cigars as wrap present – something that left his mother “furious”.

The actor shared the story during a reunion meeting for Vanity Fair with Nosferatu star Nicholas Hoult, who Grant starred with in About A Boy when Hoult was just eleven years old.

Grant recalled that after completing his work on HBO’s The Undoing back in 2020, he gave the young actor who played his son – Noah Jupe – a gift as work on the show wrapped.

Jupe was 14 at the time of filming and Grant gave him a box of cigars as a thank you.

Hoult recalled the wrap gift he received from Grant back in 2002 – a set of golf clubs. “You got me my first set of clubs as a wrap gift from About a Boy. Do you remember that? And you signed the golf bag as well,” he recalled.

Grant responded saying it was a “charming” gift and then added: “It’s better than the wrap present I gave to my son on The Undoing, which was a box of cigars. His mother was furious.”

You can watch the video of the pair’s reunion here:

Hoult has appeared in recent years in the likes of Renfield, The Menu and TV series The Great, and is due to star in the upcoming Robert Eggers Nosferatu remake and play the role of Lex Luthor in Superman. Earlier this year, he appeared in Clint Eastwood’s Juror No.2. 

Following About A Boy, Hoult famously went on to star in teen series Skins, and suggested to NME last year that it “captured that moment – the way Euphoria captures the moment now”.

“It’s funny, because I remember my Skins days being so intertwined with NME,” he added. “I went to the NME Awards one year and got to meet Alex Turner, which was so exciting because I loved Arctic Monkeys. It was a really fun party you guys had.

“I can’t remember [what he said]. Also, I was probably drunk. Who knows? But I remember having fun. And I’ve still got that picture of us somewhere, which is cool.”

In other news, Grant – who recently starred in Heretic – reflected on his character William Thacker in 1999 film Notting Hill, calling him “despicable”.

“Whenever I’m flicking the channels at home after a few drinks and this comes up, I just think, ‘Why doesn’t my character have any balls?’” he told Vanity Fair’s Scene Selection. “There’s a scene in this film where she’s in my house and the paps come to the front door and ring the bell and I think I just let her go past me and open the door. That’s awful.

“I’ve never had a girlfriend, or indeed now wife, who hasn’t said, ‘Why the hell didn’t you stop her? What’s wrong with you?’ And I don’t really have an answer to that – it’s how it was written. And I think he’s despicable, really.”

Source: https://www.nme.com/news/film/hugh-grant-gave-the-undoing-child-star-a-box-of-cigars-as-wrap-present-his-mother-was-furious-3819794