Self-proclaimed ‘grumpy’ Hugh Grant cried reading ‘Bridget Jones 4’

Hugh Grant is taking a page out of the official rom-com diary.

The 64-year-old, who is reprising his role as Daniel Cleaver in the fourth “Bridget Jones” flick, revealed that he shed some tears while reading the script for “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy.”

“I loved the script — it made me cry,” Grant told Vanity Fair Wednesday, “and I wanted to help with this one.”

“But really there’s no part for Daniel Cleaver in it at all,” he added. “They wanted him in it, and in the end, they’d done something I wasn’t crazy about.”

Grant “wrote some scenes” that director Michael Morris approved and placed into the plot. The “Love Actually” actor then signed on to star alongside Renée Zellweger, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Emma Thompson and Leo Woodall, Bridget’s newest rumored love interest.

“There are people in my life who have always said, ‘Oh, that’s much more like the real Hugh,’” Grant said of Daniel, who ended up seducing Bridget with his devilish charm in the first two films.

The star did turn down an offer to appear in the third project in the series, 2016’s “Bridget Jones’s Baby.”

As for why Grant opted out? As he told the outlet, “I really couldn’t fit my character in — he just didn’t belong, so I stepped aside.”

But Grant, who once called himself a “grumpy old man,” was more than happy to join for “Mad About the Boy.”

“It’s absolutely the best [“Bridget Jones” book], and I think it’s very funny and very, very moving,” he admitted. “I’m not in a lot, I did a week’s work, that’s it. … But when you see the film, you’ll be very moved.”

The film’s poster was unveiled in August with the tagline: “New decade. New diary.”

The shot featured Zellweger, 55, donning a pink cardigan with her character’s iconic red diary once again in hand.

“Bridget Jones’s Diary” first hit theaters in 2001 based on the book of the same name by author Helen Fielding.

The series follows Bridget as she finds herself in a love triangle between sworn enemies Daniel and Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), who ultimately wins her heart. In “Bridget Jones’s Baby,” the two are married with a son.

But “Mad About the Boy” follows the third novel, which captures Bridget navigating being a single mother and dating after Mark’s unexpected death.

Fielding, 66, opened up about the decision to kill off Mark in a 2013 interview on Today, reflecting on how telling Firth of his character’s demise was “the hardest thing.”

“It was one of the strangest conversations of my life because I had to ask if he had someone with him, if he was sitting down, and it was literally as if someone really had died. Then we sort of started laughing because they hadn’t,” she explained.

Meanwhile, it is unclear if Mark will meet the same fate, as Firth, 64, was spotted filming with Zellweger in footage obtained by the Daily Mail this summer.

This fourth installment comes four years after Zellweger admitted that “it would be fun” to reprise her role again.

“I know people are coy. I’m not. I promise I’m not. I just don’t know,” she told Vanity Fair in 2020 about the chance of another movie. “I mean, that’s a Helen [Fielding, the author of the Bridget Jones books] question, but I hope she would want to. I know she wrote a book, so maybe.”

Regardless of the outcome, Zellweger shared that the franchise has been “so much fun.”

“Man, I’d love the experience of revisiting her. I love her,” she gushed to the outlet. “I just think she’s so much fun. She’s the best.”

“Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” hits theaters on Feb. 14, 2025.