Richard Curtis may be widely known for his contributions to romantic comedies with “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Notting Hill” and “Love, Actually.” But writing and directing some of modern cinema’s most quotable scenes only occupy a portion of his professional life.
Since a trip to Ethiopia in 1985 during the famine, Curtis has also devoted much of his time and energy to charitable causes: Co-founding Comic Relief, producing Red Nose Day for years and helping create organizations like Make Poverty History and more. Decades of work has helped raise more than $2 billion and supported over 170 million people.
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On Sunday he’s being celebrated for those efforts by the film academy with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Getting an Oscar is especially exciting for Curtis who remembers as a teen having to wait until the night after to watch the broadcast in the U.K.
“I've been excited by their existence for 50 years,” he said. “This is particularly a special award, but it’s not work for which one expects praise or needs praise. So it’s very lovely.”
Curtis spoke to The Associated Press about his second career, the state of romantic comedies and Hugh Grant’s second act. Remarks have been edited for clarity and brevity.
AP: When you started Comic Relief, did you imagine it would continue this long?
CURTIS: No, it’s been one of those cascading things. I have always found that if you create a sort of venue for generosity, the public reaction is so often astonishing. When did this first TV show, we thought we’d make £5 million, but we made £15 million. The next year we made £27 million. I would have had to be a monster not to continue with it. I thought it was going to last a year. Instead, it’s lasted a lifetime.
AP: What’s top of mind for you with these causes post-pandemic?
CURTIS: We have a younger generation that is very passionate about issues of gender and diversity and climate. There’s a more sophisticated understanding of how you solve problems and change things. A lot of it is about giving power to people on the ground. And particularly since the pandemic, it’s important to go on pointing out how much difference a small amount of money can make abroad and at home.
AP: Do you see charity and film work as two different sides of your brain or are they related.
CURTIS: I don’t see the things as different. What is slightly peculiar is that I have written two very serious movies, one about malaria and the other about the negotiation of a G8 (summit). But when doing my own films, I’ve focused more on private romantic things and not gone all out on the stuff that I do the charity work for.
AP: What do you think about the staying power of your films?
CURTIS: I’m a bit puzzled by it. I can’t but sort of think it’s almost a lucky break. I remember once bumping into Chris Rock, who I had never met, and he said to me, “I like your films because they’ve got man jokes in them.” I think he was saying that the sentiment is repeatedly either undercut or reinforced by jokes that you don’t quite expect. There must be something in that combination that makes feel people feel comfortable with the heart of it.
AP: It seems like everyone wants to recreate that, but maybe the moviemaking system isn’t up to it now?
CURTIS: I think all of these things go in waves. There are two shows on telly at the moment, “Nobody Wants This” and “Colin from Accounts” that I really love. “(500) Days of Summer” was a long time ago but I adored that. And it wasn’t a comedy but “The Worst Person in the World.” I think when you look back, you’ll find there’s a consistent stream of movies that deal with those issues, just not in quite the same format.
AP: Have you enjoyed seeing Hugh Grant’s pivot into weirder, darker roles?
CURTIS: Very much. With regard to Hugh now, no acting required. He was always a scoundrel. I think it’s easier for him. He had to work harder in my movies when he was pretending to be nice. Now he’s a self-evident psychopath. I’m obviously joking but I love them. There were 10 years there where no one took any risks with Hugh. And it’s lovely now that people are casting him in very different roles. I hope he does one or two movies more in line with what we used to do. He’s a very interesting older man. But I’m loving his current tendency to kill people.
AP: You’re only 68 but awards like this do get you thinking about legacy.
CURTIS: It has been a very schizophrenic life, in the end. It has been 50/50 for about the last 15 years. It’s interesting thinking about how movies can affect change — the work of Participant and the idea that you could turn films into something with a real-world impact. I believe hugely in the ability of movies to change people’s hearts and minds and attitudes. I do think that that might be worth us all thinking about is whether movies should have impact producers — a mechanism that actually tries to make the film as effective as possible in the real world. That’s something that I’ve started to think about in joining the two halves of my life together.