Hugh Grant gets his groove back

"I know that sounds like ridiculous moaning if you're being paid all that money, but it's pressure - and I like a very easy life."

This preference for a pressure-free existence is the reason he makes so few films, a situation that has led to accusations that his heyday is over. And ironically, the character he plays is well past his best. But Grant is relaxed about that too.

"I think it's all right to be a has-been," he says of his latest role. It's a shock when he begins, to hear that upper-crust drawl; the lethargically drawn-out vowels sound so familiar.

"I don't think a human being should be judged by their success necessarily," he goes on, "particularly their present success. The fact that they've achieved anything should give them a certain amount of respect.

"Sometimes I bump into Simon Le Bon at parties. He still does his thing and does it quite successfully, but he's clearly not the star he was in the Eighties - yet he's got such a big sense of humour about it.

"Sometimes he has to sit down to deliver a song because he gets a bit tired. I think that's growing old gracefully."

This famously reticent Grant is in unusually open mood, and sounds pretty relaxed. At work, he says, it's a different matter.

"I'm intense and anxious on a film set because I am so nervous about it going wrong. Comedy is so delicate. It has to be done with exactly the right tone and timing, and it makes me stressed, because if it's not funny, it's humiliating on a worldwide scale."

He has often mentioned leaving the film business, giving up acting altogether, but today he's talking about doing more comedies.

"It's too ridiculous to talk about quitting any more," he admits. "It's only interesting to do acting in a field where you think you're good at it.

"And I am pretty good at comedy - I'm better than most actors. When I do very deep, dark, serious things I think I'm OK, but there are other people who can do it better.

"When I do light comedy, I've got something to offer, which is why I choose these films."

More often, Grant's comments are frustratingly self-effacing. Which makes it all the more surprising when he goes on to criticise what's generally supposed to be the first love of all British actors, the stage.

"Theatre is great fun for the actors, and unmitigated misery for the audience," he says. "If one's really brutally honest, about one time in 30 going to the theatre is actually an enjoyable experience and the rest of the time you're just so bored.

"I can't wait for my gin and tonic at half-time. I want to get out. So I can't justify the pleasure of acting on the stage - and performing comedy on the stage is a lot easier and a lot more fun than doing it on film."

Whether prompted by his insecurity or his notorious indiscretion with the LA prositute Divine Brown, the more Grant's star has risen, the more he has avoided interviews.

But he's always on the celebrity pages, in trademark white shirt and open collar, pictured with Jemina Khan, his girlfriend since 2004. He separated from Liz Hurley in May 2000, and, no, he won't be attending Hurley's marriage next month to Indian businessman Arun Nayar.

"I don't think many people invite their ex when they get married. We're not invited, but I am not bitter. There is no bad feeling or weirdness."

Grant describes Khan as "quite a strong girlfriend. I've been trying for many years to write a book and she shakes me like a rat and tells me to get on with it and pretty much holds a gun to my head.

"I have actually managed to write some pages now, but I always need a big outside influence".

Photographers trail Hugh and Jemima wherever they go, and gossip columnists speculate that there is tension between them, most recently commenting on a reported row while shopping together in Los Angeles.

So has all that rom-com taught him anything about women? "I don't know the secret to any of that stuff," he insists.

"I expect I need a strong woman because my mother was quite strong. I did read an interesting scientific study equating love with classic torture technique.

"One guy comes in and beats you to a jelly and then the next guy comes in and gives you a cigarette. The more this happens, the more you fall in love with your captor.

"It's like love. That's why women are so good at being nice and then nasty, nice then nasty. I think it's the same with men when they shag women and leave them: it can very often lead to infatuation."

Grant was born in 1960 in London to a carpet-salesman father and teacher mother, who died in 2001, leaving Grant so distressed he stopped working for a while.

He had found his flair for acting while at Oxford, and made his film debut in an amateur movie called Privileged.

After university, he had his first taste of theatre at the Nottingham Playhouse and later formed a revue group, The Jockeys of Norfolk.

His big-screen break came in 1987, in Merchant Ivory's Maurice, which began his long association with costume drama.

It wasn't until Four Weddings and a Funeral, in 1994, that he became a household name. His first big American vehicle, Nine Months, followed, and, of course, the 1995 Divine Brown incident.

Grant's evident discomfort with the intense media scrutiny no doubt set him on the path of reining in his celebrity.

Once the attention subsided, he found his groove as a romantic comedy hero, a slightly dim dandy. Notting Hill with Julia Roberts; Bridget Jones's Diary and its sequel, The Edge of Reason, with Renée Zellweger; Two Weeks Notice with Sandra Bullock; Love Actually; About A Boy.

Between them, Grant's films have grossed about $1.5 billion around the world. "Some of them I think are OK," he says. "I'm pleased with them and I cling to that.

"When I think I've pissed my life away, I try to think 'No, hang on, people liked some of those films.'"

But for now his thoughts are focused on his book. It's probably too much to hope that he's going to make steamy nice-then-nasty love affairs the main subject, but he does admit it has an autobiographical element.

"I'm not actually sure what the story is yet. I'm 60 pages in. I don't know where I'm going but I quite like that.

"I know who the lead character is and what the tone is. I've sort of taken all the worst aspects of myself and extrapolated them into this monster. The main character is a really chilling and depressing antihero."

So that's what he does in his spare time. It's a long way from a frothy rom-com about a past-it pop star. Is he owning up to a dark side always concealed? It's never that straightforward with Hugh Grant.

"Look," he concludes, with force, "I've got two modes. Either I am totally lazy or, once I've signed on to do something, I am an obsessive perfectionist.

"If the comedy isn't funny or you look like an idiot playing a pop star, it could be unbelievably humiliating. That fear of humiliation really focuses the mind."

Music and Lyrics opens on 9 February.