Hugh Grant is not aging that well, yes? But it’s kind of lovely too. He looks his age – a 49 year old man with no Botox, fillers or plastic surgery. He makes crow’s feet very sexy, I think. Anyway, Hugh’s a champ at giving self-effacing interviews. They actually border on self-pitying, but then you imagine Hugh’s lovely accent, and he just comes across as a fumbling guy with a lovely voice who has esteem issues. In another post, I’m afraid I gave the impression that I don’t care for Hugh – that’s not the truth. I like him a lot. I just wish he would make better movies. I’m not asking for Shakespeare (although he would be lovely in one of Shakespeare’s comedies), but just a higher class of romantic comedies. His new film, Did You Hear About The Morgans? looks horrible, in my opinion. But anyway…

So Hugh sat down for a long interview with The Mirror to promote his new film, co-starring Sarah Jessica Parker. Hugh describes himself on the verge of his 50th birthday as fearful he will never settle down and he’ll wind up a “lonely, sad old man”. Oh, yes. It’s that kind of interview. Here’s the full (extensive) interview and here are the highlights:

In an exclusive interview, the star of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones and Love Actually admits he’s terrified of hitting the big 5-0 next September. Hugh Grant says: “Fifty’s not a good number and we all have age terror sometimes in the middle of the night. I think I might have made a sort of pact with the devil in which I think I can have fun now and sort everything later. But then he comes back and says, ‘Time’s up and I’m taking you to hell as you’re going to be a lonely, sad old man’.”

“I do worry that could happen to me. To be honest, I don’t feel that old. I think I’m rather young and sprightly but then you see pictures of yourself and think, ‘Who is that old man?’ and I realise I’m not as young as I thought I was.”

“Someone took my picture in London the other day and the next day a newspaper said I looked every one of my 49 years and looked very tired and portly.”

Hugh, who famously dated Liz Hurley and Jemima Khan, believes he will remain eternally single due to what he calls “love avoidance” – backing off when relationships become too serious.

“A girl once told me the theory of love avoidance and it just sounded familiar,” he says. “It happens when you draw someone in and then you push them away as soon as they get too close. Then you bring them back and push them away again. I look at life and I see some very happy relationships but I also see the vast majority as not being that happy. I couldn’t put my hand on my heart and say I think that being in a relationship is a natural state for a human being.”

However, he claims he’s not given up hope of becoming a dad.

“I have no doubt that I’d be a marvellous father,” he says. “Maybe not when they’re tiny but when they’re a little bit older I think I’d be rather good. I’ve noticed I’ve become touchingly good with my nephews and nieces and cousins, so I don’t have that doubt.”

Grant was very close to his mother, Fynvola, who died of pancreatic cancer in July 2001, and he adores his father James, who he sees for a regular Sunday night supper.

“I regard him as an impeccable father and I love him very much but I would say he was of the old school,” he says. “I see lots of fathers now who think they have to join in with their sons the whole time and he certainly didn’t do that. In fact I played rugby from 10 years of age through to university and he only ever came to watch me once. But I was never remotely upset by that – most boys’ parents didn’t come and watch. Nowadays no child plays a game of soccer or whatever without 300 relations on the touchline. I think times have changed and I think the old-fashioned way is fine.”

Hugh confesses he does not make friends easily and shies away from one-on-one meetings.

“Personally I find it quite difficult to be alone with one person,” he admits. “There aren’t many people I can sit and have lunch and feel totally at ease with and not be in a slight panic about making conversation. There are only about five people in the world I can do that with and I have to call those my best friends.”

Hugh is speaking in Los Angeles after taking two years off from acting – turning down all offers of work following his 2007 movie Music and Lyrics alongside Drew Barrymore. The reason for his partial retirement, he reveals, was a series of crippling panic attacks which forced him to rely on heavy doses of prescription drugs to keep calm.

While making Music and Lyrics, in which he played faded pop star Alex Fletcher, he had “four or five terrible panic attacks,” and adds: “I did the whole film full of lorazepam” – a drug used to treat anxiety disorders.

“It was scary. When I got back home I put Post-it notes around my computer saying, ‘Accept no more films.’”

But he was persuaded to return for the comedy Did You Hear About The Morgans? – out on January 1 – after seeking out a variety of different therapies.

“I went to every shrink in London,” he says. “I had every treatment – I had a man oscillate something in front of my eyes and another man who stabbed me in the arm. The one thing that did me some good was a bloke who said that when you have a panic attack it’s your natural adrenalin which you need to do the scene, but just a fraction too much. So if you just breathe and take it down a little you can do it. Just knowing that helped, so I got through this movie just about all right. Just.”

[From The Mirror]

Hugh goes on to say that he agreed to do Morgans after reading the script, and because he “thought this was a more mature sort of thing for me to do in my advancing years.” He also has high praise for Sarah Jessica Parker, saying that she’s “one of the funniest, nicest, least actressy human beings I’ve ever come across but she’s the polar opposite of me in the sense that I do almost nothing in life and she literally never stops. She’s on her BlackBerry all day long. She’s producing Sex and the City, she’s got a perfume business, she’s got a clothes business, she’s got three kids and a husband. She’s a really high energy New York girl. I’m impressed with her but I’ll never be that person.” Well… God bless. It breaks my heart a little, but I’m wondering if this film is actually going to do well. Hugh has been promoting the hell out of it, and it’s the kind of light comedy I suspect people will like during the holidays.

Hugh Grant in Berlin on December 4, 2009. Credit: WENN