English actor Hugh Grant was BOTD in 1960. Born to a military family with aristocratic ancestry, he attended Oxford University, where he starred in the student film Privileged. He worked in regional repertory theatre and as a stand-up comic, until finding success in film playing a series of gay men: a closeted aristocrat in James Ivory‘s Maurice, based on E. M. Forster‘s novel; Julie Andrews‘ gay son in the AIDS-themed TV drama Our Sons; and the vicious queen director Bunny in An Awfully Big Adventure, based on Beryl Bainbridge’s novel. He also made vivid appearances in Roman Polanski’s erotic drama Bitter Moon and was an hilariously effete Frédéric Chopin in James Lapine’s Impromptu, romanced against his will by Judy Davis’ mannish George Sand. He reunited with Ivory for the award-winning adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel The Remains of the Day. He became a global superstar in the 1994 comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral, inexplicably turning down Kristin Scott-Thomas for Andie MacDowell. The film’s success and Grant’s high-profile relationship with model-actress Elizabeth Hurley turned him into an unlikely sex symbol. Following in the path of fellow British expatriate Cary Grant, he appeared in a string of romantic comedies, ranging from the very good (Notting Hill with Julia Roberts, Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson) to the so-so (Love, Actually) to the truly awful (Two Weeks’ Notice, Mickey Blue Eyes). In 1995, his career imploded spectacularly when he was arrested in Los Angeles, receiving oral sex in his car from sex worker Divine Brown. He re-emerged largely unscathed in the 2000s playing a series of heartless bastards, notably the overgrown man-child in About A Boy; a roué who introduces Renée Zellweger to anal sex in Bridget Jones’ Diary; and a cannibal in Lana and Lilly Wachowski‘s film Cloud Atlas. For his role as the villainous Phoenix Buchanan in the 2017 comedy film Paddington 2, he learned to sing and tap-dance for a musical performance of Rain on the Roof from Stephen Sondheim‘s musical Follies, sporting pink sequinned flares. He won critical praise and a slew of industry award nominations as the closeted gay politician Jeremy Thorpe in the Russell T. Davies-scripted TV series A Very English Scandal, chronicling Thorpe’s trial for the attempted murder of his ex-lover Norman Scott. His role as a basement-dwelling psychopath in the 2024 horror film Heretic was also successful. Following the media scandal around his arrest, Grant became heavily involved in campaigns to investigate phone-tapping by the British tabloid press, bringing successful libel suits against several newspapers. He has two children with former partner Tinglan Hong and three further children with Anna Eberstein, whom he married in 2018. While rampantly heterosexual, he earns Honorary SuperGay status for his willingness to play gay enthusiastically and often and for reviving the English tradition of theatrical camp.