Pleasant Morning Buzz

Homepage
Recent Headlines
Subscribe

Hugh Grant Talks About Panic Attacks

Hugh Grant is making the rounds to promote his new romantic comedy with Sarah Jessica Parker called Have You Heard About the Morgans? Hugh has revealed that he suffers from debilitating panic attacks and that is why he hasn't done a movie in two years, since 2007's Music and Lyrics. He first suffered a panic attack many years ago, but they got so bad he had to take anti-anxiety medication.

He had his first attack 10 years ago on Notting Hill, with Julia Roberts. The problem recurred in subsequent movies, but came to a head in his last film, Music and Lyrics, with Drew Barrymore in 2007. Incredibly, for an actor of his calibre and experience, he had developed a "sort of phobia of close-ups".

So his withdrawal from the big screen was a conscious decision to get his mojo back. "I thought: 'Do I really want to put myself through that hell again, just in case I get any of those panic attacks'," he says. "It's absurd. As long as there's another person in the scene, I'm fine. "It's just when it's me by myself, especially my head, I don't like it. Sometimes it can get really intense. I sort of can't breathe, can't think."

Of Music and Lyrics, he adds: "I spent most of that film taking tranquilisers." It took a series of visits to doctors and phone calls from director Marc Lawrence, his collaborator on Music and Lyrics and Two Weeks Notice, to draw him out of his self-imposed exile.

We think it's great that he's so open about his anxiety issues. In another interview he said he took Lorazepam to control his anxiety during the making of Music and Lyrics.

Posted on December 17, 2009

blog comments powered by Disqus