“Behind the Scenes Drama: Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts’ Explosive Clash on the Set of Notting Hill!”

Nor is it only his leading ladies Grant has had problems with; he’s also admitted that he and Robert Downey Jr. got along terribly on 1995’s Restoration. Grant has claimed Downey “wanted to kill me,” while the American actor called Grant “a jerk… self-important, kind of like, boring flash-in-the-pan a*****e Brit.” Grant has since patched things up with both Barrymore and Downey.

Things didn’t get off to the greatest start on Notting Hill, either. Roberts, who came to the role off the back of a series of flops and a flurry of bad press, was not taken with the film’s concept. When pitched it by her agent, Roberts admits her first reaction was, “How boring, how tedious—what a stupid thing for me to do.” Eventually she accepted the role regardless, in part to get away from America: “since everyone will think it’s about me, I’ll just take a little European vacation and be me for three months.”

Grant had also had a difficult few years; many of his post-Four Weddings movies flopped, his relationship with Elizabeth Hurley made him a tabloid mainstay, and he made headlines in the worst way in 1995 after being caught in his car with a prostitute.

Even so many years after his humiliating Shakespeare in Love audition, Grant admitted his primary feeling toward Roberts was “fear… I think the emotion you have when you first meet someone tends to linger with you. I was all ready to be scared, and I must say, the fear never quite left me.”

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