Hugh Grant has apparently had enough of his kids’ “posh private schools.”
The actor and father of five is campaigning for more outdoor play at schools, saying he is “another angry parent fighting the eternal, exhausting and depressive battle with children who only want to be on a screen.”
During a campaigning event organized by Close Screens, Open Minds at Knightsbridge School in London this week — which was also attended by American social psychologist and author Dr. Jonathan Haidt and King Charles III‘s second cousin Sophie Winkleman — Grant, 64, slammed the “pathetic” rules these “kind of ridiculous posh private schools” have when it comes to screens.
“They’re the ones saying they’re not going to play outside today because it’s raining, or they can’t go on the climbing frame because it’s windy,” Grant said, according to a story published by The Telegraph on Wednesday, April 23. “It’s pathetic — it seems to me that there is space here for a hero school, a set of schools to break the mold.”
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He added, “The final straw was when the school started saying, with some smugness, ‘We give every child a Chromebook, and they do a lot of lessons on their Chromebook, and they do all their homework on their Chromebook,’ and you just thought that is the last [expletive] thing they need, and the last thing we need.”
Dr. Haidt, 61, is campaigning for screen-free schools and believes smartphones should be banned for students under 14 and social media should be prohibited for students under 16 to fight an “epidemic of mental illness” in children. He said technology should have a role in schools, but “not on children’s desks.”
Grant and his wife, Anna Eberstein, share three children together: Blue, 7, Lulu, 9, and John Mungo, 12. He also has two older children, Tabitha, 13, and Felix, 11, from his relationship with Tinglan Hong.
The Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy star insisted that parents can’t be afraid of “rocking the boat” and need to speak out when it comes to issues involving technology in schools.
“Because I think that once you get a critical mass of parents who are outraged by EdTech, as well as all the other issues, the phones, etc, that is when politicians listen because they’re scared of that,” Grant said. “That’s also when schools start to listen because they’re scared of people leaving their schools and losing business.”
Grant recently got emotional when discussing the joys of fatherhood in a November 2024 interview with Kelly Clarkson.
“I went mad in my 50s,” he said when Clarkson, 43, a mom of two, stated that he has “a lot of kids.”
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“I mean, there’s a lot to dread because I’m old and they’re noisy and it’s unbearable and I do a lot of hiding in the loo. I do a lot of sleeping in there now. There’s a lock, but they’ve pretty much broken it now,” he joked before admitting he loves “a bit of” playful rough-housing.
“Let’s face it, the bit when they jump in your arms, the 6-year-old, you know, she calls it her chimpanzee hug, I quite like that,” he said, tearing up. “I’ve made myself cry.”
