Hugh Grant Shares Hilarious Notes He Got from “Love Actually” Director Richard Curtis: 'Now Do a Funny One'

Grant presented Curtis with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 15th Governors Awards on Sunday, Nov. 17

• Hugh Grant revealed the hilariously harsh criticism he got from director Richard Curtis at the 15th Governors Awards on Sunday, Nov. 17
• The actor presented Curtis with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the event
• Grant starred in Curtis' romantic comedies Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Notting Hill (1999), Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) and Love Actually (2003)

Hugh Grant is reminiscing about his career journey with filmmaker Richard Curtis.

On Sunday, Nov. 17, Curtis — best known for his work on Grant's romantic comedies Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) and Love Actually (2003) — received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 15th Governors Awards in Los Angeles.

While presenting the award, Grant, 64, made sure to remind Curtis, 68, of some funny moments they had during filming.

"You would think, given that most of his films were about love, that he would have been or had a directorial style of gentle, soft, and fluffy. You would have been quite wrong," Grant joked.

"Forever etched on my heart are some of the notes he gave me including, 'And now do do a funny one,' and 'Don't worry, we can cut around you.'"

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Grant also revealed how everyone working on Four Weddings and a Funeral liked his audition except Curtis.

"It was lovely because the director, Mike Newell, liked me and wanted me," the actor, who played the role of Charles in the movie, said.

"The producer liked me and wanted me, and the money people wanted me. The only person who didn't want me and, in fact, took such an instant and violent dislike for me that he did everything in his power to stop me getting the part was the writer."

"It is this a------ who we are honored to honor tonight," Grant then joked.

Curtis was honored on Sunday alongside producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, who received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, and Juliet Taylor and the late Quincy Jones, who received Academy Honorary Awards.

"Richard Curtis is a brilliant comedic storyteller whose tremendous charitable efforts embody the meaning of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award," Academy President Janet Yang said in a statement released in June.

The Oscar statuette Curtis received is given “to an individual in the motion picture arts and sciences whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry by promoting human welfare and contributing to rectifying inequities," per the release.

Last year’s Governors Awards gave honorary Oscars to industry legends Angela Bassett, Mel Brooks, Carol Littleton and Michelle Satter.

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Related: 23 Things You Never Knew About 'Love Actually'

Directed by Roger Michell and written by Curtis, Notting Hill celebrated its milestone 25th anniversary earlier this year.

The movie starred Julia Roberts and Grant as Anna and Will, a movie star and a bookstore owner who embark on an unlikely romance filled with hurdles surrounding Anna's fame — but who end up happily married with a baby on the way.

Of the "I'm just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her" line becoming as famous as it did over the two and a half decades since Notting Hill's release, Roberts, 57, told British Vogue for the magazine's February 2024 issue, "I mean, it was a great scene."

"But who knew that that would become the line," she added.