‘Love Actually’ Director Richard Curtis Calls Movie ‘Out of Date’ Over Lack of Diversity: I Feel ‘Stupid’

Samantha Bergeson
·2 min read
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Love may actually be all around, but it was mostly a white Christmas when it came to 2003 rom-com “Love Actually.”

Writer-director Richard Curtis reflected on the beloved classic film, saying the lack of diversity makes him “feel uncomfortable and a bit stupid” two decades later.

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“There are things you’d change but, thank God, society is changing, so my film is bound, in some moments, to feel out of date,” Curtis said in a interview with Diane Sawyer for ABC’s 20th-anniversary special “The Laughter & Secrets of Love Actually: 20 Years Later” (via Entertainment Weekly).

Curtis continued, “The lack of diversity makes me feel uncomfortable and a bit stupid. You know, I think there are sort of three plots that have sort of bosses and people who work for them.”

The film focused on 10 separate love stories, with Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Laura Linney, Bill Nighy, Liam Neeson, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Alan Rickman, Andrew Lincoln, Keira Knightley, Colin Firth, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rodrigo Santoro, Lúcia Moniz, Martin Freeman, Kris Marshall, Joanna Page, Heike Makatsch, Olivia Olson, Martine McCutcheon, Abdul Salis, and Gregor Fisher.

Billy Bob Thornton, January Jones, Denise Richards, Elisha Cuthbert, Shannon Elizabeth, Claudia Schiffer, and Rowan Atkinson also made cameos in the ensemble piece.

“There is such extraordinary love that goes on every minute in so many ways [in life], all the way around the world, and makes me wish my film was better,” Curtis added. “It makes me wish I’d made a documentary just to kind of observe it…Films can act as a reminder of how lovely things can be and how there are all sorts of things which we might pass by, which are, in fact, the best moments in our lives.”

Actor Grant said during the anniversary special that while “Love Actually” is a “bit psychotic,” Curtis’ heart was in the right place.

“The thing is with him, what you have to remember is when he writes about love, he means it,” Grant said. “And that is quite rare. It comes from the heart — it’s true. And I did drunkenly watch a bit of ‘Love Actually’ a few months ago with my wife, and she was the one who said, ‘Oh look, it’s all about pain; it’s all about suffering.'”

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