Hugh Grant, the British star of films like Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bridget Jones’s Diary, and Love, Actually, shared a surprising family discovery while speaking to a crowd in Delhi on Saturday.

According to the Hindustan Times, the 65-year-old actor revealed that his father, 97-year-old Captain James Grant, was born somewhere in India, making him “Indian or Pakistani by birth.” Grant told the audience, “So I guess that makes me half Indian, or half Pakistani.”

The actor explained how he uncovered this connection while searching for his father’s birth certificate. “I had to find his birth certificate the other day because I was applying for some visa or something, and it was really hard,” he said. “It was some very obscure town in the north of India. In fact, I think it might be Pakistan, I’m afraid, now.”

Grant’s grandfather also served in the British army, likely stationed in India before fighting in World War II in France. The actor has previously spoken about his fascination with the “stories of soldiering” shared by his father and grandfather.

During his Delhi appearance, Grant also discussed his unconventional path to acting and the family resistance he faced. “My mother came from the school that put actors and prostitutes on the same kind of level,” he joked. “So I think she always wanted me to go into the church.”

He took up acting at 23 out of financial necessity, initially planning to pursue it “for a year or two” before finding “a grown-up job.” Now 65, he quipped with characteristic self-deprecation, “In some ways, I’m ashamed of myself.”

Grant joins a long list of British celebrities with Indian roots. Nobel Prize-winning author Rudyard Kipling, who wrote The Jungle Book, was born in Mumbai (then Bombay) in 1865. George Orwell, author of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, was born in Bihar in 1903. Singer Engelbert Humperdinck was born in Chennai (then Madras) in 1936.