Full recovery! Hugh Grant opened up about his private battle with the novel coronavirus after contracting the illness earlier this year.
During a virtual interview on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on Tuesday, November 10, the 60-year-old British actor estimated that both he and his wife, Anna Eberstein, had the virus in February after receiving a positive antibody test months later.
“My wife and I had it way back in the winter. We have the antibodies, I’m rather proud of them. So we’re not going to get [again], I don’t think,” Grant explained as host Stephen Colbert appeared to grow concerned. “I still have those antibodies.”
The Notting Hill star went into detail about his symptoms — including the tell-tale sign of losing his sense of smell.
“It started as just a very strange syndrome where I kept breaking into a terrible sweat. It was like a poncho of sweat, embarrassing really,” he continued. “Then my eyeballs felt about three sizes too big and this feeling as though some enormous man was sitting on my chest … I thought, ‘I don’t know what this is,’ and then I was walking down the street one day and I thought, ‘I can’t smell a damn thing.’ You start to panic.”
Grant then began “sniffing flowers” as an attempt at self-diagnosing himself. “You get more and more desperate,” he joked. “I started sniffing in garbage cans. You know, you want to sniff strangers’ armpits because you just can’t smell anything. … I eventually went home and sprayed my wife’s Chanel No. 5 directly into my face. Couldn’t smell a thing, but I did go blind!”
The Love Actually star wed Eberstein, 41, in May 2018 and is the father of five children. In October, Grant teased that he’s had to get a little creative with the extra time he’s been able to spend with his kids while at home amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I started by cutting my daughter’s Barbie’s hair out of sheer boredom, and I discovered I was extremely talented,” he said on Good Morning America at the time. “Then I started cutting my children’s hair, whether they wanted a haircut or not. I just strapped them to a chair and cut their hair. … I would say I’m enchanting, but I don’t know what the children would say.”
