We all have bad days. We all have those days when we don’t act the way that we know we should. Unfortunately, when you’re a major celebrity, that has eyes on them all the time, it can be tougher to deal with those bad days. Christian Bale knows this, having once gone viral after losing his temper at a crew member on set, and Hugh Grant is admitting he “did a Christian Bale” himself on the set of his new movie.
Speaking with Total Film (via Yahoo), Hugh Grant, who plays the villain in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, admitted that on the first day of shooting, he lost his temper on set. He thought he was giving somebody who should have known better a hard time, but apparently, he tore into a nice lady who just made an honest mistake. Grant explained:
I lost my temper with a woman in my eyeline on day one. I assumed she was some executive from the studio who should have known better. Then it turns out that she’s an extremely nice local woman who was the chaperone of the young girl. Terrible. A lot of groveling... I did a 'Christian Bale.'
In doing “a Christian Bale,” Hugh Grant refers to a famous incident from 2009 when audio from the set of Terminator: Salvation leaked. On the tape, Bale completely goes off on the film’s cinematographer, who walked into Bale’s eyeline during a scene. Bale’s rant is an expletive-fueled tirade where he threatened to break the man’s lighting equipment among other things. Bale later apologized. At this point, Bale's rant is perhaps the most famous thing about the movie where he blew his top. Hopefully, Dungeons & Dragons will be a better film.
Hugh Grant himself is the one comparing his own outburst to that of Bale. It sounds like the cause of the two events were very similar, whether the intensity of Grant’s blowup was on par with Bale’s, I suppose only the people in the room know for sure. Grant says he did a lot of groveling after the fact in an attempt to apologize to the person he lost his temper at.
These certainly aren't the only two actors to lose it a bit on set. More recently Tom Cruise made headlines when audio of himself was leaked from the set of Mission: Impossible 7. Cruise was going off on a pair of crew members who were allegedly violating covid protocols. Although in that case, not everybody thought Cruise was in the wrong.
On the plus side, the fact that Hugh Grant is the one telling the story would seem to indicate he’s looking to be honest about his behavior, even the parts of it that he is less than proud of. That’s something. This isn't the first time the actor has allegedly been a problem for others, as Grant was famously banned from The Daily Show under Jon Stewart for his behavior. Perhaps Grant is trying to be better, in part by being honest when he's not.
