In the months leading up to the filming, Hugh Grant “drove (his) family mad” by devoting himself fully to the role of Heretic.
The 1990s star played the eerie and ominous Mr. Reed in the thriller, testing two Mormon missionaries’ religious convictions by trapping them in his house.
Grant said on BBC Radio 2 on Wednesday that he spent months researching his role and preparing by making mood boards and a comprehensive biography.
“I thoroughly researched the character. I really wanted to dive into the ideas that this person is promoting, and they are really complex. I drove the family crazy doing it for months and months and months,” he revealed.
“The script is filled with mood boards, numerous spidery notes, and a lengthy biography that grows and develops over the course of the months. (It grows) until I can tell you nearly everything that occurred on this character’s birthday, decades before he was born. It’s crazy, I know.”
He conducts “an absurd amount” of character work because it makes him feel “marginally less panicked” when the cameras start rolling, according to the Notting Hill actor, who has three daughters with his wife Anna Eberstein.
In other parts of the conversation, the British actor commended Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East, who play Sisters Barnes and Paxton, his “unnervingly good” co-stars, for keeping the audience in a state of horror throughout the movie.
“It’s difficult that after twenty minutes of the movie, they have to start acting a little terrified and then continue to get more and more scared for an additional hour and ten minutes. Brutally harsh. “How they did it is beyond me,” Grant remarked.
On Friday, November 1, Heretic will be released in theaters across the United Kingdom.
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