An Afterword by Hugh Grant

During the lowest ebbs of shooting "Four Weddings and a Funeral" (the director, Mike Newell, hurling a coffee cup across a car park yelling, 'We're fucked! We're fucked!' or me having to be helped, gibbering back onto the set after watching myself on rushes for the first time), Richard Curtis used to cheer me up by talking about the new film he was hatching, and what funny scenes he'd already thought up for me.

And in the years that followed, as I sat around flicking the pages of "Congo II" and thinking 'maybe there is something here', the only thing that kept me from signing on the dotted line was the thought that Richard's new script was just around the corner. It never was. Never has a human being taken longer to write a perfectly straightforward romantic comedy.

Some call it perfectionism. I called it sloppy, and sent him angry faxes urging him to drop Rowan Atkinson, The Vicar of Whatsit, his own children and the world's starving and concentrate on me.

When, however - many years later - the script finally did arrive, two things scared the life out of me. One was how good it was (William Goldman: 'One of the two best screenplays of the last ten years') and the other was that Julia Roberts was going to be the girl. My nerves at the first preliminary read through in New York were out of control. Fear always goes straight to my voice and for the first twenty pages or so, whenever Julia would say something romantic and funny to me, I found I could only respond with a sort of angry bark. After that I settled down a bit and thought I was pretty funny, though Richard told me afterwards that my voice had gone incredibly high and posh, like the prep school boy in that 'Seven Up' documentary.

Rehearsals were in a freezing church hall in Notting Hill in April and went very well on the whole. The other British actors were all a bit too talented for my liking, but very nice to me. Julia was brilliant and very unstarry but so cold we had to have two men tail her around the room with gas heaters at all times to stop her passing out.

The only ugliness came when, trying to be amusing, I contrived to wrestle Gina McKee (Bella) out of her wheelchair. She was quite badly injured but charming about it.

And the shooting was great. Things I remember most clearly include -

Roger Michell, unable to get enough nicotine into his blood stream, ripping the filter off cigarettes and smoking them two at a time. (Tim McInnerny claims to have seen him behind a piece of scenery secretly experimenting with a third cigarette in one of his nostrils.)

Coming off the set after what I thought had been a particularly hilarious take and seeing Richard and Duncan Kenworthy staring at the playback monitor as though they'd both just been told they had BSE.

Julia getting me in the mood for a tricky scene by tweaking my nipples quite violently and then crushing a grape against the side of my neck.

Me doing the same to her. (Not the nipple bit.)

Rhys Ifans (Spike) having lunch in the Shepperton pub with a bunch of Welsh extras from 'The Mummy', denying he was drunk when he got back to our set, and then gleefully mouthing 'PLASTERED, MATE' to me during the actual scene.

Coming off the set after what I thought had been a rather lame take and being encouraged by all the smiles and hilarity around the playback monitor.

Finding the monitor had been tuned to England v Colombia.

The film's brilliant make-up designer, Jenny Shircore, telling me how great the rushes were though my teeth were a bit yellow and my top lip non-existent.

Emma Chambers (Honey) doing a very rude and immature thing with a chocolate brownie on my chair during the chocolate brownies scene.

Julia and Hugh Bonneville (Bernie) swapping embroidery designs.

Giving him a really terrible time about this.

Everyone on the streets of Notting Hill itself being very nice to us except for one man who turned up every day to throw eggs at us.

As to what we actually shot, I'm afraid I know nothing. I tried a couple of times to go to rushes, but after the 'Four Weddings' debacle (counselling, valium) Duncan and Richard hired security men to keep me out of the screening room.

They did recently invite some of us to see a rough cut but I made the mistake of agreeing to meet Rhys for a swift half beforehand, and am consequently none the wiser.

I hope it's good, and knowing what a great job Nicotine Men did, I'm sure it is. But even if for some reason it isn't, I'm pretty sure - as I sit here learning my lines for 'Congo III' - that the script is and was a masterpiece, and I really hope you enjoyed it.