Hugh Grant's Drunken Warhol Purchase

Actor makes $17M selling painting bought on impulse

Hugh Grant ought to get drunk and go to art auctions more often.

The "Four Weddings and a Funeral" actor admitted to the Daily Mail that his purchase of an Andy Warhol painting that he later sold for a $17 million profit was a drunken impulse buy.

Grant was hailed as an art conoisseur for buying the painting of Elizabeth Taylor for $3.2 million from a Sotheby's auction in 2001, but now says he was just on a two-day drinking spree when he saw the painting and he decided to have his assistant bid on it.

"And to my horror, she did, and even worse, got it," Grant said.

Grant sold the painting in 2007, six years later, for $20.8 million.

The adventure started with a drunken dinner with his father, Grant said, after which the two decided on a whim to jet over to New York on a Concorde flight to visit Grant's brother, Jamie, in New York.

"I'd been having a drunken dinner with my father the night before, and I said, "We ought to go see my brother Jamie. You know, the Concorde's amazing," Grant said. "'And he said, "I hear it is.'' So I bought him a Concorde ticket and we went. We had lunch, drank a lot of beer."

"I slightly regret selling it now, even though it made me rich."

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