Why Hugh Grant Was Arrested In The '90s

Hugh Grant's humble and hopelessly romantic disposition in his rom-coms is far from the reality of the actor's relationships. In fact, one instance in the 1990s left people wondering if the fairytale endings that his movies pushed were all a lie. A sex scandal left him completely humiliated, but Grant lives to tell the tale — with humor — today.

In 1995, Grant was in Los Angeles to publicly promote his movie "Nine Months." The actor was definitely on camera during his trip, but it just happened to belong to the Los Angeles Police Department. The Guardian reported at the time that Grant picked up sex worker Divine Brown on Holywood's Sunset Strip and had sex with her in his car. It was reported that he was arrested for "lewd conduct in a public place." In a statement after the fact, Grant said, "Last night I did something completely insane. I've hurt people I love and embarrassed people I work with. For both things, I'm more sorry than I can ever possibly say." Grant was ordered to pay an over $1,000 fine and attend an Aids education program, per a Los Angeles Times report from that year.

In 2021, Grant told Marc Maron on his "WTF" podcast that his reasoning behind the car affair was that he did not like how his performance turned out in "Nine Months." "I was not in a good frame of mind, and I had a Ken Russell kind of lunch," Grant said, referring to the director known for boozing during the day. The "Four Weddings and a Funeral" actor was dating Elizabeth Hurley at the time, and the couple went on to date for a number of years after the fact, before calling it quits in 2000. Hurley and Grant have remained friends ever since.

Some decades later the incident morphed from a near career-crushing event into an embarrassing story of Hugh Grant's youth. Grant definitely owns the humiliation of his arrest; he posted his and Divine Brown's mug shots on X (then Twitter) in 2019 to purportedly get back at internet trolls. He captioned the post: "To my dear trolls. Hope this is helpful. Now you have more time to spend with mummy."

In 2024 at the premiere of his horror movie "Heretic" at the American Film Institute Festival, Grant mentioned the story to the audience before introducing the film. Chris Gardner of The Hollywood Reporter captured the moment and posted it to X. As Grant stood on stage, he joked to the crowd: "Hollywood Boulevard has always been a lucky place for me." As Gardner points out, Grant's incident actually happened on Sunset Boulevard, but we get the joke!

Along with the audience's roars, Grant's co-stars Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East dropped their jaws over his cheeky comment, and the film's directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods were doubled over with laughter.