If she didn't kiss him then there would not be a film or rather a very different film.
This is where it becomes the passive male fantasy which doesn't happen on screen very often or in real life.
Does this passive male approach only work in the movies?
What kind of a stupid question is this? Spoiler alert.... films aren't real life you know and things may happen on screen that may not happen in reality.
shareI just watched the movie again and I feel totally the same.
I realise the whole first kiss scene is constructed on purpose to make us believe that things are going poorly for Hugh Grant until when she suddenly kisses him. When she says no ten times standing next to the fridge, the filmmaker wants us to believe that she can't wait to get out of the house. So yeah, cinematically it's a very effective plot twist, but it lets us in the dark about what's really going on in her mind.
And he's so passive! Not only she initiates the kiss, but she always takes the initiative all along the movie. I think the only point when he takes the initiative is when he goes to Hampstead Heath. But before that, she makes advances at least 6 times. I mean, did it ever happen in real life that a girl needs to insist and ask a guy twice for him to come upstairs and sleep with her?! (when they are at the Ritz at night, and again in Will's house at night).
So in the end it's a refreshing change in gender stereotypes, but like the OP I wonder how often this happens in real life. Of course it was meant to be a one-chance-in-a-million story anyway.
I think the whole thing with her being a movie star was a hang up. I can see why she had to initiate everything due to that as he probably didn't want to scare her off lest she might feel he's encroaching on her space and privacy. However, he did ask her out when he was impersonating a magazine reporter. But I couldn't tell what he saw in her unless it was off camera. She was very guarded in her emotions, you couldn't read them. Like you said, that kiss was the only thing that gave us an indication of what was going on her mind and it seemed very out of the blue to me. We could read his emotions but again, what was his attraction to her as far as personality? She didn't have much of one, is that because of her celebrity and being protective? She must have developed a trust in him already to have laid that kiss on him as she must have thought it wouldn't make the papers.
He made the movie, he was the main character, but I felt nothing for Anna, even when she was giving that speech about the girl standing in front of a boy, it still seemed lifeless. I think she finally smiled at the end at that press conference.