‘I thought: “I’ve engineered the death of Hugh Grant!’’’ – the inside story of Four Weddings and a Funeral

The low-budget romcom about Britain’s upper middle classes launched the careers of its writer Richard Curtis and Grant. Cast and crew share their stories – from Liz Hurley in that dress to Amber Rudd’s role as an ‘aristocracy coordinator’

It’s been 30 years since audiences first met Hugh Grant as a stuttering serial monogamist who falls hopelessly in love with a glamorous American (Andie MacDowell) in Four Weddings and a Funeral. The low-budget romcom, directed by Mike Newell and scripted by Richard Curtis, came out of nowhere to become a global hit when it was released in 1994.

Based on Curtis’s own experiences of being a guest at a seemingly endless merry-go-round of weddings, the film follows Grant’s sweary, bumbling Charles and his group of friends – which includes his deaf brother – as they navigate love, loss and grief. From the first “fuck” uttered by Grant as he wakes up late for a wedding in the opening scene, to Rowan Atkinson’s inept priest who is unable to get anyone’s name right, and Kristin Scott Thomas’s chain-smoking, aristocratic stoicism, it is a film that is at once hilarious and devastatingly sad.