Hugh Grant: I'm like "Barbra Streisand in trousers"
Actor Hugh Grant is such a perfectionist when it comes to making movies he's driven others mad, he told Tracy Smith in an interview for CBS' "Sunday Morning," to be broadcast August 7.
But Grant, who stars alongside Meryl Streep in the new film "Florence Foster Jenkins," says there are downsides to being a perfectionist.
"I think it can be a good thing," Grant told Smith. "But I think there's also a drawback. And I've driven people mad on films that I've made. I want more takes. I want to try new lines. Then I want to interfere in the editing process and I want to interfere in the advertising process, everything, everything. Pretty much Barbra Streisand in trousers."
In a wide-ranging interview, Grant talks about his motivation to work with Streep; his 1995 arrest for a run-in with a Los Angeles prostitute; his views on marriage; and what's next in his career.
"I'm torturing someone at the moment about a film," Grant remarked when asked what's ahead. "I like to do that for a very long time, like a cat with a half-dead mouse. And then, and usually, I walk away at the end and say, 'I'm not going to do it.'
"I find it hard to sign on the dotted line, sometimes," he added.
Grant, who was himself a victim of cellphone hacking, also talks with Smith about his work with the watchdog group Hacked Off, which speaks out against abuses by the British tabloid press. The project occupies more of his time than making films these days, and he's content that way.
"I feel more satisfied," Grant said. "It's strangely bracing not to have people kissing my butt. And it's strangely bracing to be on big BBC news programs confronted by quite scary interviews and having to keep your end up, and keep your wits about you. I said 'bracing' -- it's utterly terrifying."
The Emmy Award-winning "Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood" is broadcast on CBS on Sundays beginning at 9:00 a.m. ET. Executive producer is Rand Morrison.
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