We fully admit it. If this had been a Hugh Grant quiz, we would have failed big-time:
How many children does iconic rom-com star Hugh Grant have?
a) None, the dude is a curmudgeonly British bachelor, duh
b) One, a love child with ex Liz Hurley, but don’t tell anybody — even she doesn’t know
c) Hugh who?
d) Oh, five — that would be five kids!
We would have picked A or B, then definitely C before ever, ever landing on D. So when we heard today that Grant has indeed fathered five children, we were dumbfounded. Where have we been? Where has he been? I mean, we now know what he’s been doing, but how did he sneak all these children into the world behind our backs? Jeez, Hugh.
All right. Let us catch you up here. You may recall that Grant was romantically linked to actor Elizabeth Hurley for a long time — 13 years to be exact.
More: Hugh Grant Is the Best Part of the Love, Actually Sequel
It was Hurley who dished on her ex on March 6. While promoting The Royals, she told E! News that she and Grant are still quite close (not love-child close, but close enough to knock our socks off with this juicy intel). “I’m very lucky that 31 years into our friendship, he’s still my best friend in the whole world. He’s really a great guy,” Hurley said of Grant. “I see him a lot; I speak to him a lot. You know, he’s now a father of five, he has five kids and he’s a great dad. Yeah, he will remain my best friend for life.”
What was that, Liz? That part before the nice best-friend talk, yada yada? Five?
Hurley — hilariously — didn’t stop with that news. Two days later, she was chatting about Grant again on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen and said, “[Grant] had another [baby] last week. He has five. He was over 50 when he spawned them all! He’s an enchanting dad.”
More: Hugh Grant Couldn’t Recognize a Pic of Renée Zellweger
Grant is 57, which means he’s packed five kids into seven years of his life. And somehow, we missed it. Thank heavens for oversharing ex-girlfriends. Hurley and Grant broke up in 2000, but clearly the two remain close — and she’s not above having some (gentle) fun at his expense. She told Cohen, “Having these kids has transformed him from a very miserable person into a fairly miserable person. It’s improved him. He’s gone up the scale.”
Right, right, you say, but who are the mothers of these children? Well, try to keep up: In September 2011, Grant had a daughter named Tabitha with a woman named Tinglan Hong, who was a receptionist at a Chinese restaurant in London (this sounds like worthy rom-com material; scriptwriters, take note). Tabitha’s Chinese name? Xiao Xi, which means “happy surprise.” Yeah, us too.
But Grant and Hong were just a fling — sorry, “fleeting affair,” according to Grant’s publicist. In September 2012, a year later, Grant had a second child, John Mungo Grant, with a Swedish TV producer named Anna Eberstein. Things get really cray-cray when Grant proceeds to reunite with Hong — enter third child, Felix Grant, who was born in 2013. Grant then bounced back to Eberstein to create his fourth bebe, a daughter, born in December 2015. Her name was not released, which, frankly, is just fine because we are having enough trouble following this fertile love triangle. Apparently, Eberstein and Hong even overlapped pregnancies at one point, but you’re probably better at math than we are, so.
Anyhoo, Baby No. 5 is with Eberstein. No word on name or sex yet.
And what does Hugh have to say about all this? The notoriously media-wary actor said in a recent interview with People TV that becoming a dad was “the nicest thing that’s ever happened to me.” Aw, the lovable old coot is a softie after all. He said, “It’s just lovely to have all that love around. Suddenly you love someone more than yourself. It’s unheard of in my case and they love you and it’s all enchanting.”
Well, color us enchanted-ish. OK, maybe more stunned than enchanted, but we’re rolling with it.
Leave a Comment