Hugh Grant to play 'killer, rapist, cannibal' in 'Cloud Atlas'

Hugh Grant has revealed that he will play six characters in Cloud Atlas.

The Bridget Jones actor, who joins the likes of Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and Jim Broadbent on the David Mitchell novel adaptation, said that his "incredibly evil" alter egos "do a lot of killing and raping".

"I have six cameo parts in this strange, ambitious film," Grant told Empire magazine. "I do a lot of killing and raping. I wear an awful lot of prosthetic make-up, too. You probably won't know that I am in the film!

"But it was a laugh. I thought before I read it that I'd turn it down, which I normally do, but I was interested in meeting the Wachowskis because I have always admired them enormously. And they are so charming and fascinating."

The 51-year-old rom-com star admitted that he found it difficult to adapt to the nature of the movie, written by Run Lola Run's Tom Twyker and with The Matrix's Andy and Lana Wachowski as co-directors.

Teasing one scene, Grant added; "I slightly called my own bluff. In one of the parts I am a cannibal, about 2,000 years in the future, and I thought, 'I can do that. It's easy'.

"And then I am suddenly standing in a cannibal skirt on a mountaintop in Germany and they are saying, 'You know, hungry! We must have that flesh-eating, like a leopard who is so hungry...' and I am thinking, 'I can't do that! Just give me a witty line!'"

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