New Delhi, Dec. 7 -- Perhaps we love villains the way we do because people are inherently evil, Hollywood star Hugh Grant said, with a twinkle and a grin, speaking at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit on Saturday. It seemed a fitting combination of the two Grants the world has come to know. The actor who redefined the romcom hero as an awkward-witty-messy Everyman in movies such as Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Notting Hill (1999) and Love Actually (2003) has spent the past decade in a sort of villain era, featuring rather malevolently in films such as Paddington 2 (2017), The Gentlemen (2019) and the twisted psychological thriller Heretic (2024), and indulging his love for the "weird" in roles such as that of the unforgettable Oompa-Loompa in Wonka (2023). "The interesting question to me has always been why audiences prefer the baddie and always have done," said Grant, 65. "I can only guess that it's because we are innately evil. and there is a sort of recognition that our positive characteristics, our niceness, our kindness, is just stuff we plaster on top to make life bearable." In conversation with actor Rahul Khanna, Grant also talked about his possible Indian roots (his father was born in the subcontinent); how his hotel room was full of shawls and bangles he had haggled over in a local Delhi market the previous day; and, interestingly, how much he disliked what technology had done to the idea of a shared movie-watching experience. "I think it's sad that everyone sits at home or watches a film on their iPhone," he said. "I was reading the news in the wonderful Hindustan Times this morning about Netflix buying Warner Brothers. For those of us who love the theatrical experience of film, that's another piece of bad news, I think. My hope in all things is that we'll get bored of the digital experience, soon, and go back to real-life experiences." In response to a question on Hindi-cinema roles, Grant said that he would like to feature in a Bollywood film. "I love song and dance now (the "now" being a reference to how famously miserable he was, rehearsing for and performing the dance sequence in Love Actually). When song and dance are done right, it's just blissful." The British star spoke of his long-standing connection with India. His father, James Grant, a soldier, was born "in what is now either India or Pakistan. which in a way makes me either half-Indian or half-Pakistani by birth." One of Hugh Grant's earliest films, Maurice (1987), was an Ismail Merchant-James Ivory production. He also spent weeks in 1980s Kolkata, shooting for La Nuit Bengali (The Bengali Night; 1988), directed by Nicolas Klotz and co-starring Soumitra Chatterjee, Supriya Pathak and Shabana Azmi....