CNN
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Many people loved Hugh Grant’s character in the 1999 romcom “Notting Hill,” but Grant isn’t one of them.

He spoke about playing William Thacker, opposite Julia Roberts as Anna Scott, during a conversation for Vanity Fair’s “Scene Selection.”

“Every time I’m watching the channels at home after a few drinks and this comes up, I just think, ‘Why doesn’t my character have any balls?’” Grant said. “There’s a scene in this movie where she’s in my house and the daddies come to the front door and ring the bell and I think I’ll just let her go past me and open the door. That’s terrible.”

In the film, Anna is a famous actress who falls in love with William, a bookseller in Notting Hill. That meant navigating her fame, including the ever-present paparazzi, something Grant said his character didn’t do well.

“I’ve never had a girlfriend, or even a wife now, who hasn’t said, ‘Why the hell didn’t you stop her?’ What’s wrong with you?’” Grant said of the scene. “And I don’t really have an answer to that. It’s how it’s written. And I actually find him despicable.”

Grant rose to fame playing romantic leads, but was self-critical of some of his earlier performances.

“I read that I hate all my movies. That’s not true, the films are often great. I hate me. I always think, ‘Oh, you screwed that up,'” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2016. “You never feel good about your own stuff. It’s just like the old days when the answering machine messages always made you feel nauseous when you heard your own voice. And seeing yourself on film is that times 50.”