Hugh Grant: ‘There’s something unromantic about marriage’

On screen, Hugh Grant epitomizes a rom-com leading man. Charm? Check. Dashing smile? Check. British accent? Excuse us as we swoon.

But in reality, the Florence Foster Jenkins actor doesn’t plan on exchanging “I do’s” ever.

“If you ask me the question do I think human beings are meant to be in 40-year-long, monogamous, faithful relationships, no,” he said Wednesday on The Howard Stern Show. “Whoever said they were? Only the Bible or something. No one’s ever said that’s a good idea.”

“But you know what’s so weird?” Stern asked. “Here you are a guy that promotes romance more than anybody on the planet. I mean, you’ve been in more fabulous romantic comedies — ”

“– And I don’t think those two things are contradictory, you see. I think there’s something unromantic about marriage. You’re closing yourself off,” he explained. “I’ve always admired the French and the Italians, who are very devoted to their marriages and they take them extremely seriously, but it is understood that there may be other visitors at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, but you just never say anything, but that keeps the marriages together.”

Grant pointed out that his movies don’t always have the most traditional happy endings.

“The whole moral of Four Weddings and a Funeral was that some people were just not cut out for it,” he said. “The last line of that film was, ‘Will you agree not to marry me?’ because that’s the key for him in how to be happy, and my personal belief is that’s the key for a lot of people. As soon as you get married, you’re into possessiveness, ownership, jealousy, all these unhappy things. Boredom. And if you don’t do those things, it can still be sexy, romantic, fun.”

Not that he doesn’t think matrimony can work: “I can see there’s lovely aspects of it sometimes, if you marry exactly the right person, your best friend, and it’s cozy and it’s lovely. But people make so many mistakes.”

Listen to the clips below to learn why he turned down Two and a Half Men after Charlie Sheen left (“They didn’t have a script or a character”) and spent four years pretending to be his own agent (“I saved myself an absolute fortune.”)

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