It looked for many years like Hugh Grant was happy to be an eternal bachelor or hop from one relationship to another without making it official. 

The 'Love Actually' star now admits that after finally tying the knot at the ripe age of 57 last year, he had marriage - and being a parent - all wrong, and that his friends who had encouraged him to walk down the aisle all these years were actually right. 

Grant married his long-term girlfriend Anna Eberstein in May last year and together they have three children - John, born in September 2012, a second child born in December 2015, and another born in March 2018. The names of the latter two have never been publicly announced.

But his love life has been a little 'unconventional'.  Just a few months after John's birth, he had another child in December 2012 with his ex Tinglan Hong after a brief reunion. The pair already had one child together in 2011 before he started his relationship with Anna. 

He is also godfather to the son of Liz Hurley, with whom he was in a relationship for 13 years before breaking up in 2000.  The pair never had any children together. 

Even as recently as 2015, it seemed like he might never marry as he told People magazine that he was "not really a believer in marriage" and that this was down to what he had seen in other people's marriages.

"I've seen very few good examples, maybe five, in my life, but I think otherwise it's a recipe for mutual misery," he said. 

In an interview with Chris Evans on the Virgin Radio show on Monday, though, he admitted that marriage was something he "put off" and now that he is a husband, his feelings about it have changed completely.

After tying the knot in a "very small affair" last year, he told Evans that he has no regrets and has actually enjoyed it.  

"It was very nice getting married. It was another thing I put off too many decades. Very nice. Very nice being married," he said. 

And Grant gave Evans an honest answer when he was asked what had made him put it off for so long. 

"Well, I was just plain wrong. I was wrong. And children, you know, I used to roll my eyes. People would say, oh Hugh you don't understand it, but they were right," he said.