Notting Hill actors, Richard Curtis respond to Emma Chambers' death

Hugh Grant and Notting Hill screenwriter Richard Curtis paid tribute to Emma Chambers, their former colleague who died at the age of 53.

Grant, who played Chambers’ on-screen sibling in the 1999 film from director Roger Michell, called her a “hilarious and very warm person and of course a brilliant actress.”

Chambers’ agent confirmed to EW on Saturday that she died of “natural causes,” though no further specifics are known at this time.

“We’re obviously terribly sad. She really was a great, great comedy performer and a very fine actress. And a tender, sweet, funny, unusual, loving human being,” Curtis said in a statement to EW. “In my work, she worked opposite Dawn French and Julia Roberts, and was more than the measure of the pair of them.

“I suppose I particularly remember those jokes at the end of each episode of The Vicar of Dibley,” he continued, noting her popular role on the BBC series he created and wrote. “They were always done right at the end of the recording — with no time left — and were big feats of complicated remembering, and she was always completely accurate, completely innocent, completely hilarious. She has that classic and hard-to-find combination of being very, very accurately funny, while also seeming to be very, very truthful and real.”

James Dreyfus, who played Martin in Notting Hill, called Chambers “wonderful,” “talented,” “unique,” and “unspeakably funny.”

Emma Freud, the film’s script editor and wife of Curtis, called her a “beautiful friend.”

“We’re very very sad,” Freud tweeted. “She was a great, great comedy performer, and a truly fine actress. And a tender, sweet, funny, unusual, loving human being.”

Others speaking out in tribute of Chambers include French (her Vicar of Dibley costar), actor Rufus Sewell, and Top Gear‘s Jeremy Clarkson.

“She was a late addition to our theatre company at the Crucible Sheffield many years ago. It’s fair to say she woke us all the f— up,” Sewell tweeted.

Read more tributes below.