Hugh Grant Reveals Sweet Letter from Drew Barrymore After 1995 Arrest

After co-starring in the 2007 romcom Music & Lyrics, it’s clear that Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore built a genuine friendship. However, that bond started before they even met in person. Grant was a guest on The Drew Barrymore Show, and the old friends talked like no time had passed. The Notting Hill actor also shared an anecdote from his scandalous past and how it bonded the two of them forever.

Back in 1995 while he was dating Elizabeth Hurley, Grant found himself in a PR nightmare after he was arrested for soliciting famous sex worker Divine Brown. When faced with the relentless press that was desperate for gossip, Grant found an unexpected friend in Barrymore when she wrote him an encouraging letter in the aftermath. “You were so nice,” Grant said. “It was during the dark days of my Divine Brown scandal, I was just an idiot. I was a grown-up idiot who got caught by the police.”

Grant explained that he received her note when there were “5,000 members of the press” camped outside his English home. “I opened a letter, from you, that was very supportive and nice, and it was very cheering up,” Grant explained. “I thought, ‘I love Drew Barrymore.’ Words of support from an actress I didn’t know in Hollywood was lovely, so, you will always have a place in my heart.” Barrymore was no stranger to scandal after her wild younger days — at the time, she had stirred up drama after flashing David Letterman on air — so she felt compelled to reach out.

“That whole incident I related in my own life,” she admitted. “I think that whether it’s an actor or politician or anything in between, we expect people to be infallible, perfect, never flawed — and God forbid we do anything in our personal lives that we would like to remain personal… I just had to reach out to you.” Barrymore also shared a story when she drunkenly made out with Grant when they met in New York City. “One of the moments that I had the most moxie, and I don’t think we’ve ever talked about this, I walked into I think it was the Waverly Inn,” Barrymore recalled. “This was years ago. I had a few drinks, I walked in and I ran into you. And instead of saying hello, I grabbed you by the collar and I fully started kissing you.”

Barrymore implied that his expression suggested, “‘You’ve never greeted me that way before,’ [but] then you had a second thought and you were like, ‘You know, I’m not hating this.’ And then we flirted and then it was like, ‘OK, bye. See you soon.’” Grant also recalled that moment, revealing that he was also quite drunk at the time and also with some “very nice but not drunk studio executives” who “were very surprised” by the brash make-out. “Someone said, ‘Oh, there is Drew Barrymore,’ I get up to say hi and then we make out for 10 minutes,” Grant said. “Then I sit down, and we go on talking about the script.”