Hugh Grant 'Terrified' of Starring With Oscar Winner Meryl Streep in 'Florence Foster Jenkins'
— -- Hugh Grant said he was “terrified” of playing the husband of Meryl Streep’s character in “Florence Foster Jenkins” but found the legendary actress to be “delightful.”
“I was terrified of her with her 19 Oscar nominations, but actually she was delightful and raised my game,” Grant said today on “Good Morning America” of Streep, who has won three Oscars.
Grant, 55, said Streep was a “big reason” he returned to moviemaking to star in “Florence Foster Jenkins.” The "Notting Hill" actor plays the husband of Streep’s character, Florence Foster Jenkins, an American heiress who became famous in the 1940s for her terrible singing voice.
“She was so hilariously bad that she could fill Carnegie Hall and things like that and she never knew that people were coming to laugh at her,” Grant said of Foster Jenkins. “She was protected from the knowledge of that by me, her husband, and a little group around her.”
Grant said he turned his nervousness about acting alongside Streep into a running gag with the star, whom he called “an actress of genius.”
“I used to ask her every day, ‘Meryl, are you nervous?,’” Grant recalled. “For the first week or so she’d tell me, ‘Yes, yes, I’m nervous,’ and after two weeks she got bored of me asking and said, ‘No, I’m not nervous anymore.’”
Grant’s role in “Florence Foster Jenkins” is a return to Hollywood for the star, who has not appeared in many acting roles in recent years.
“I had moved on slightly,” Grant said. “I was doing other stuff in life. I had been involved in various political things in Britain.”
“But occasionally it’s lovely to dip my toe back in lake showbiz.”
"Florence Foster Jenkins" opens in U.S. theaters Aug. 12.
