Hugh Grant has named the one thing that he believes has changed movie sets forever - and he’s not a fan.
The British actor says the atmosphere on set has changed beyond recognition since he started out in the film industry in the early eighties.
The reason? Mobile phones.
During an appearance on US chat show The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Monday night, the Notting Hill star said he now feels that film sets are “weird” because people aren’t as close as they used to be.
“You know, in the old days, by the end of the second week, you were all getting drunk in the evening and having dinner and falling in love with each other and all that,” he lamented.
“And all that stopped because of telephones. Really everyone goes home and looks at Twitter. It’s so sad.”
The host then asked: “So, if there weren’t telephones on set, there’d be more affairs going on?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Hugh replied. “You know, [Quentin] Tarantino bans telephones from sets and quite right too, and the people there, they do all shag each other – or so I’m told.”
The actor, who is back on the big screen in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, has previously joked about his relationships with many of his former female co-stars.
In a 2009 interview with Elle, when he was asked to describe the women he’d worked with in three words, he replied: “Andie MacDowell: southern belle, charming, gorgeous. Emma Thompson: clever, funny, mad as a chair. Renée Zellweger: delightful, also far from sane, very good kisser.
“Sandra Bullock: a genius, a German, too many dogs. Julianne Moore: brilliant actress, loathes me. Rachel Weisz: clever, beautiful., despises me. Drew Barrymore: made her cry, stunning film-star face, hates me.”
Despite what Hugh might have thought about her, Drew Barrymore recently defended her former co-star amid controversy over whether he was rude to model Ashley Graham on this year’s Oscars red carpet.
A video of Ashley interviewing Hugh at the Academy Awards ceremony went viral, with some people decrying his curt responses and possible eye roll.
Drew, who appeared alongside Hugh in 2007′s Music and Lyrics, had her own interpretation: The actor was simply being his “grumpy” self.
“There’s this thing going around with him and Ashley Graham on the red carpet. People are like, ‘Oh, he’s such a curmudgeon, and she’s so thrown,’” the talk show host said during an episode of The Drew Barrymore Show.
She continued: “I’m like, no, that is Hugh Grant. You think you’re getting this charming movie star, and what you really get is grumpy Hugh. And then you fall in love with grumpy Hugh.”