Actor’s Arrest Sparks Frenzy in World Press : Police: Briton Hugh Grant is charged with engaging in lewd conduct in his car with a woman identified as a prostitute.

The phone started ringing at the Los Angeles Police Department at 6:30 a.m. The BBC wanted all the details. So did the London Daily Mirror. Reporters from as far as Sydney, Australia, scrambled to get the story in their Wednesday editions.

“We’re playing it big. Huge. Front page splash and inside pages. It’s an absolute shock,” said Hugh Wittow, an editor at the Sun, London’s best-selling tabloid. “He’s Britain’s nice guy.”

Another summer, another Hollywood scandal. This year’s features Hugh Grant, the boyish-looking English actor who rose to international stardom in “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” Grant was arrested near Sunset Boulevard early Tuesday and charged with engaging in lewd conduct in his BMW with a 23-year-old woman identified by police as a prostitute.

The London tabloids were gearing up to fill today’s editions with psychological explorations of why the all-English hero (who dates model and actress Elizabeth Hurley) would be found in the company of one Divine Marie Brown. And the Fleet Street tabloids reportedly were already sending emissaries to offer Brown thousands of dollars for her exclusive story.

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By 8:45 a.m., Los Angeles police spokeswoman Lorie Taylor was just trying to catch her breath, after taking an average of three calls every two minutes from the world’s press. “It’s just a little crazy down here,” she said.

According to Taylor, LAPD vice investigators patrolling near Sunset and Courtney Avenue in Hollywood about 1:30 a.m. saw Brown as a white BMW pulled up. Brown hopped into the car, which turned onto Hawthorn Avenue, a tree-lined residential street. The officers approached the car, and saw Grant, 34, and Brown engaged in a “lewd act,” Taylor said.

Grant and Brown were booked and released on their own recognizance. The pair will be arraigned on the misdemeanor offense in Hollywood on July 18, and could face up to a year in jail if convicted.

Through his publicist, the actor issued this statement: “Last night I did something completely insane. I have hurt people I love and embarrassed people I work with. For both things I am more sorry than I can ever possibly say.”

Grant was in Los Angeles to promote his upcoming romantic comedy “Nine Months,” which will open in theaters July 12. Neither the film’s director--Chris Columbus, known for such family fare as “Home Alone” and its sequel--nor Tom Jacobsen, 20th Century Fox president of production, would comment on how Grant’s arrest would affect promotion of the film.

Sources at Fox studio were surprised at the news and worried about any fallout. “Nine Months” is the story of an angst-ridden child psychologist, forced to face his fear of commitment when his girlfriend, played by Julianne Moore, gets pregnant. His other co-star is Tom Arnold, a veteran of the tabloids with his past marriage to Roseanne.

“Nine Months” is a critical film for Grant, his first big commercial Hollywood production since he took America by storm playing a charming, bumbling bachelor in last year’s low-budget, British-made hit “Four Weddings and a Funeral.”

Some already were offended at the media firestorm surrounding Grant’s arrest.

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“Unfortunately, America as a collective whole has lost its etiquette,” said Beverly Hills entertainment attorney David Colden. “Matters that would have previously been left undiscussed, or the subject of gossip with discretion, have become front-page news events.

“Hollywood has always had stars that made moral blunders. But the business of those indiscretions was largely the business of Hollywood,” he added. “It didn’t become the subject matter of general interest newspapers and the electronic media.”

Colden, like others, said he believes that Grant’s arrest will quickly be forgotten. In any case, he added: “It’s been a Hollywood maxim that even bad publicity is better than no publicity at all.”

In London, screen director Michael Winner also said he did not believe the charge would hurt Grant’s career.

“Although there is a moral backlash in some parts of America,” he said, moviegoers would be unlikely to “picket the theater. People talk a lot of rubbish about his nice clean image. . . . Compared with what goes on in Hollywood, he should be given a Good Housekeeping seal.”

He added: “The police should really have better things to do in one of the most vice-ridden cities in the world--where mugging and theft and rape are of an outstanding quantity--than to be snooping around two individuals in a perfectly normal act.”

Leeds reported from Los Angeles and Tuohy reported from London. Also contributing to this report were Times staff writer Tina Daunt and Times correspondent Judy Brennan in Los Angeles.