Hugh Grant has revealed that he agreed to take part in the fourth Bridget Jones film after rewriting his part.
The English actor, 64, played the dashing love rat Daniel Cleaver in the first two films of the franchise, starring opposite Renee Zellweger as the clumsy and hapless romantic Bridget Jones and Oscar winner Colin Firth as the buttoned-up lawyer Mark Darcy.
However, he did not reprise his role in the last film, 2016’s Bridget Jones’s Baby, where his character appeared to be killed off, and Bridget becomes pregnant.
The movie instead saw billionaire US love guru Jack Qwant, played by Patrick Dempsey, compete for Bridget against Mark.
Grant told Vanity Fair: “I really couldn’t fit my character in – he just didn’t belong, so I stepped aside.”
However, he said that he “loved the script” for the latest instalment, Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, and said it “made me cry, and I wanted to help with this one”.
“But really there’s no part for Daniel Cleaver in it at all,” Grant added.
“They wanted him in it, and in the end, they’d done something I wasn’t crazy about.”
However, he explained that due to the strength of British author Helen Fielding’s work Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, which sees Bridget as a widow in her 50s with two children following Mark’s death some years earlier – and him writing “some scenes” – he will return.
He said: “It’s absolutely the best (book) and I think it’s very funny and very, very moving. I’m not in a lot, I did a week’s work, that’s it … But when you see the film, you’ll be very moved.”
Grant was in the second instalment titled Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason, where he became a travel broadcaster after leaving the job in publishing which he had in Bridget Jones’s Diary when he was her boss.
The actor has previously won a best acting Bafta for Four Weddings And A Funeral, and been given nominations for supporting actor for Paddington 2 and Florence Foster Jenkins.
He received a leading actor nod for the TV awards for his role in A Very English Scandal.
Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy is set to be released next year, and it is unclear if Firth’s character will be dead.
He has been reportedly filming scenes with Zellweger in South Kensington, London.
