Hugh Grant is not dancing around the fact that he didn’t enjoy working on the new “Wonka” film.
The Golden Globe winner, 63, appears as an Oompa Loompa in the enchanting new flick starring Timothée Chalamet — but says the process of filming the movie was far from magical.
To achieve his character’s small stature, motion capture was used on Grant’s body. He called the experience “drivel.”
“It was like a crown of thorns, very uncomfortable,” Grant told Metro. “I made a big fuss about it. I couldn’t have hated the whole thing more.”
The “Notting Hill” actor didn’t know whether he should “act with my body or not” and when he raised the question to the production crew, he “never received a satisfactory answer.”
“And frankly, what I did with my body was terrible, and it’s all been replaced with an animator,” he added.
When asked if in hindsight it was all worth it considering the finished product, Grant quipped, “Not really.”
“I slightly hate [making films] but I have lots of children and need money,” he added.
The “Four Weddings and a Funeral” actor is a proud dad to five kids.
He shares daughter Tabitha, 12, and son John, 11, with ex-wife Tinglan Hong. He also shares son Felix, 9, a daughter, 6, and a fifth child born in 2018 with his wife, Anna Eberstein.
Grant also condemned the use of CGI in the film industry, saying he doesn’t care for it much.
“It’s very confusing,” he shared. “With CGI now, you can’t tell what’s going on.”
“Wonka” tells the story of how the famous chocolatier, played by Chalamet, got his start and how he met the Oompa Loompas, who later came to work for him.
In the trailer for the film, Grant is seen in a glass jar, wearing the bright orange makeup and green wig that was made famous in the 1971 “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” starring the late Gene Wilder.
Speaking about his decision to portray Oopma Loompas in a new light, director Paul King told the Radio Times, “The Oompa Loompas don’t have any dialogue in the book, really, and the films, they’ve sort of got very little.”
“But in the book they do have these very, very long songs — or they’re presented as songs, they’re poems.”
“But they’re so funny, and I was reading them sort of trying to get a voice in my head, and they’re so sort of biting and sarcastic and scornful and incredibly funny, and Hugh’s voice just kept coming towards me,” King added.
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