"Love Actually" Is 20 Years Old, So Here's 18 Surprising Things About The Film You Might've Not Known
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It's the holiday season! So here are 18 facts about Love Actually that just might take you by surprise:
1.Hugh Grant and Colin Firth's storylines were originally conceived as separate films.
However, director Richard Curtis told Vulture in 2013 that he eventually realized he'd "be more interested in writing a film about love and what love sort of means, and how, you know, about the subject rather than one example of a story about that subject."
2.The idea for the airport reunion clips at the end of the film came while Richard was stuck at an airport around the time of filming the 1997 film Bean, which he wrote and also starred Rowan Atkinson. Rowan plays Rufus, the jewelry salesman in Love Actually.
"I was stuck airside, and I suddenly saw all this extraordinary emotion. And I thought, That is the proof that there is so much overflowing love in the world, and it’s absolutely core to people’s lives," Richard told Vulture.
3.Better yet, the airport reunion clips weren't staged.
"And that was real documentary footage that we shot without anyone knowing we were shooting, and we had to rush up to people and ask for their permission to use it," Richard Curtis told Vulture.
4.Emma Thompson wore a fat suit, according to the Telegraph.
5.Some cast members do not rewatch the film, including Emma Thompson and Keira Knightley.
"No, I have not watched the film again," Keira Knightley told Entertainment Weekly in 2021. "No, it was 20 years ago," Emma Thompson said on The Tonight Show in 2022.
6.Laura Linney and Rodrigo Santoro, who played coworkers who try for a chance at love, were both recently dumped when they filmed their big kissing scene.
"It was so sweet because we were both very brokenhearted when we made that movie. He had just been dumped, [and] I had just been dumped. I remember the day we were going to shoot [our kissing scene], and we [were] both just slumped in the van," Laura said on the Graham Norton Show in 2019. "He was like 'Laura, my heart is broken,' and I was like, 'So is mine.' I turned to him, and I was like, 'Well all day long we get to make each other feel better.' I think there is a sweetness to the scene because of that. We were both very sad."
7.Alan Rickman apparently hated filming that gift wrapping scene.
"Rowan was just taking his time. So he would do 11-minute takes," Richard recounted in a 2022 ABC special about the film. In the interview with Diane Sawyer, Richard mimicked Rowan's mulling over the scene and doing multiple takes on set. "Poor Alan was there all the time, going 'Grr, ugh, ugh,'" he said.
8.Hugh Grant didn't want to do his now-iconic dance scene.
"No Englishman can dance when they're sober at 8 in the morning," Hugh said in the ABC special. Richard explained that, though Hugh was "grumpy," on the day of filming he got the actor to do the scene because of a "contractual obligation."
9.However, Hugh said he came up with the idea of having his secretary walk in on him dancing.
"Genius," he called it in the special.
10.Andrew Lincoln wrote the handwritten cards his character Mark presents to Juliet.
"My big scene in the doorway felt so easy. I just had to hold cards and be in love with Keira Knightley. And that was my own handwriting on the cards, thank you for noticing," he told Entertainment Weekly in 2017.
11.However, he worried his character was coming off "as a creepy stalker."
"The story is set up like a prism looking at all the different qualities of love. Mine was unrequited. So I got to be this weird stalker guy," he told EW, though Richard also told the publication the character worked because Andrew "was so openhearted and guileless, we knew we'd get away with it."
12.January Jones, who played the American Jeannie, apparently wrote about half of her lines.
This is according to the film's script editor Emma Freud, who shared a series of stories and facts about Love Actually on Twitter in 2015.
13.Richard named Colin's character Jamie after his brother for a very funny reason.
"Richard only called Colin Firth's character 'Jamie' so the kids could say 'I hate uncle Jamie.' His brother is called Jamie. #LoveActually," Emma tweeted.
14.Rowan's character Rufus was initially conceived as an angel sent to stop Harry from buying that necklace for his secretary.
"Originally, Rowan's character over-wrapped the gift on purpose to stop Alan Rickman being able to buy the necklace. Because he was an angel," Emma tweeted.
15.Though many characters never shared screen time, apparently most of the cast were on set together to film the airport scene.
"I remember Denise [Richards] and I doing wardrobe fittings together and walking around going, 'What do we do?'" Shannon Elizabeth, who played the American Harriet, told Entertainment Weekly in 2013. "We were both just kind of star-struck to be there with everybody. Those actors, that was amazing."
16.The was an alternate ending never filmed where the cast cross paths on a bridge.
"One character was going to be driving over a bridge, one was going to be running under it, one was going to be at the Houses of Parliament, and so on. It was going to cost us half a million dollars. Eventually, the producer said, and I agreed, that I didn’t have the skill to do it," Richard told Empire in 2017.
17.Finally, in case you didn't know, a mini-sequel short film was released in 2017.
Called Red Nose Day Actually, the short film was in support of Comic Relief's annual Red Nose Day fundraiser. The majority of the main cast returned for the sequel.
18.And some cast members even recreated several of their iconic film scenes in the mini-sequel, including Mark's cards:
And Daniel (Liam Neeson) and Sam (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) having a heart-to-heart on the bench.
And, of course, the prime minister's dance...though no update on if Hugh was happy this time to break out his moves.
Love Actually is currently streaming on Netflix.
