Heretic, the twisty new A24 horror movie from writer-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, starts with a question: Why would two young female Mormon missionaries enter the house of a sketchy older man despite strict instructions never to do so unless there's a woman present? And why would they stay when it's clear to every person in the audience screaming for them to get out that he's an unstable creep? The movie's answer is simple: because he's Hugh Grant. Grant entered movies as an object of desire. In the Merchant Ivory production Maurice, based on a gay romance that E.
M. Forster wrote in 1913 but kept secret until after his death in 1970, Grant is as beautiful as any man has ever been on screen, with dark, liquid eyes and a pale, delicate face that might have been sculpted by a Greek master. With a shock of wild, floppy hair, Grant was alluring and mysterious—he played Lord Byron the year after Maurice—but it wasn't until Four Weddings and a Funeral that he discovered the secret to his future success: playing characters who don't realize that they look like Hugh Grant.
In Four Weddings and Notting Hill, to name just two of the string of now-classic romantic comedies that followed, women as gorgeous as Andie MacDowell and Julia Roberts practically throw themselves at his feet, but he's so frazzled he hardly notices. Four Weddings makes a gag of his inability to be on time for any of its titular nuptials—including, eventually, his own—but even in movies where he's n.
