«Love Actually» is a 2003 romantic comedy film featuring an essembled cast, that has been discussed as an arguable modern-day Christmas classic.
Let’s find out more about the movie!
- When casting the part of Sarah, writer and director Richard Curtis auditioned a great many British girls, but kept saying, “I want someone like Laura Linney.”
- The casting director eventually snapped and said, “Oh, for fuck’s sake, get Laura Linney then.” Linney then auditioned and got the part.
- The airport greeting footage at the beginning and end of this movie is real. Writer and director Richard Curtis had a team of cameramen film at Heathrow airport for a week, and whenever they saw something that would fit in they asked the people involved for permission to use the footage.
- Kris Marshall returned his paycheck for the scene where the three American girls undress him. He said he had such a great time having three girls undress him for twenty-one takes that he was willing to do it for free, and thus returned his check for that.
- The lake in which Lúcia Moniz and Colin Firth are “swimming” was actually only eighteen inches deep and they had to kneel down and pretend to be in deeper water.
- It was also over-run by mosquitoes, and Colin Firth was badly bitten, and his elbow swelled up to the size of an avocado, requiring medical attention.
- A speech given by Hugh Grant in this movie (where he extols the virtues of Great Britain and refuses to cave to the pressure of its longstanding ally, the United States) was etched in the transatlantic memory as a satirical, wishful statement on the concurrent relationship with George W. Bush. Tony Blair responded by saying in 2005, “I know there’s a bit of us that would like me to do a Hugh Grant inLove Actually… (2003) and tell America where to get off. But the difference between a good film and real life is that in real life there’s the next day, the next year, the next lifetime to contemplate the ruinous consequences of easy applause.”
- Laura Linney said she wished that her character didn’t pick up the phone while Karl (Rodrigo Santoro) was in her apartment.
- Lúcia Moniz (Aurelia) got the part as a result of a joke by a friend of hers, who is a casting director, and sent her photos to this movie’s casting director. Lúcia went to the casting and ended up being chosen.
- The idea for Mark’s (Andrew Lincoln’s) surprise of the band singing “All You Need Is Love” at Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Juliet’s (Keira Knightley’s) wedding came from Jim Henson’s funeral (which writer and director Richard Curtis attended) where all of the puppeteers brought their Muppets and sang a song.
- Knowing about Billy Bob Thornton’s quite unusual fear of antique furniture, Hugh Grant would sometimes flash a piece of antique (which is abundant in England) in front of Thornton just before the cameras rolled, and watch him freak out in amusement.
- Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) and his manager Joe (Gregor Fisher) are the only characters in this movie whose storyline doesn’t directly connect to any of the others. All of the other main characters are linked via family, friendship, or work.
- The credits at the end of this movie incorrectly list Tessa Niles as the performer in the Christmas concert scene. Joanna, Sam’s crush, does all of her own singing in “All I Want for Christmas is You” at the Christmas concert. She had such an amazing voice that writer and director Richard Curtis had it edited so it sounded more like a child singing.
- Thomas Brodie-Sangster didn’t know how to play the drums when he was cast. Fortunately for him, his father, Mark Sangster, plays the drums and taught Thomas how to play them.
- Billy Bob Thornton accepted his part in the film without even reading the script, he was so flattered by the accompanying letter asking him to be part of the ensemble.
- According to writer and director Richard Curtis, they had to put Dame Emma Thompson in a “fat suit” to make her appear heavier because she is actually a thin woman.
- The filmmakers stated that Colin picks Milwaukee, a relatively small city in the more sparsely populated Midwest part of the United States, instead of somewhere more common like New York or California, because to foreigners, places like Milwaukee are seen as more “exotic” and to someone like Colin, who has a more offbeat way of looking at things, it would fit his persona to choose somewhere like Milwaukee.
- Andrew Lincoln (Mark) wrote the romantic cards. In 2013, Andrew reminisced about his climactic gesture in this movie with Entertainment Weekly, and revealed, “It is my handwriting. It’s funny, because the art department did it, and then I said, ‘Well, can I do it?’ because I like to think that my handwriting is really good. Actually, it ended up with me having to sort of trace over the art department’s, so it is my handwriting, but with a sort of pencil stencil underneath.”
- Despite their differences in looks, Keira Knightley (Juliet) is only five years older than Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Sam) in real life.
- Rufus – Jewellery Salesman (Rowan Atkinson) was initially supposed to be an angel, and disappeared as he walked away from Daniel (Liam Neeson) in the airport scene.
- The scene where Colin (Kris Marshall) accidentally insults the caterer’s food to her face was originally written as a scene for Hugh Grant’s character in Four weddings and one funeral (1994), but was cut from that movie.
- Writer and director Richard Curtis was originally working on two movies, one about Prime Minister David (Hugh Grant), and the other about Jamie (Colin Firth). When the plots turned out to be so similar, he merged them into a single movie.
- Thomas Brodie-Sangster, who was thirteen years old when he played Sam in this movie, was cast as a thirteen-year-old again eight years later. Brodie-Sangster started playing the young teen Jojen Reed on Game of Thrones (2011) in 2013, when he was twenty-three.
- Andrew Lincoln was initially unsure about his character, as he thought the scene with handwritten signs was “borderline stalker territory.”
- 10 Downing Street in this movie is not, of course, the actual Prime Minister’s residence, but a replica. The exterior was created in the Shepperton Studios car park and the interior is a set. In preparation for this movie, Richard Curtis and production designer Jim Clay were escorted on a two-hour tour of the actual Number 10 by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown (Prime Minister June 2007 to May 2010). They were not permitted to take photographs or make sketches of the interiors, and throughout the entire tour they were flanked by security. The “Number 10” that appears in the movie was designed by Clay, solely from memory.
- Originally, this movie had some small scenes that showed Sam (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) as being a brilliant gymnast. The ending where he rushes through the airport to see Joanna would involve a long chase where he dodges objects and people through a series of jumps and gymnastic moves. All allusions to Sam’s physical talent were eventually removed, and the special effects-heavy end scene was cut back to what is seen in the movie.
- Laura Linney filmed this movie in London, England, while she was working on Mystic River (2003) in Boston, Massachusetts. She flew across the Atlantic Ocean several times within few months, in order to complete her work on both movies.
- When Daniel says, “We need Kate and we need Leo and we need them now,” a toothpick can be seen in Daniel’s left hand as he says, “now”. Later, Sam has a toothpick in his mouth while he and Daniel are lounging on a couch. What Richard Curtis describes as “this toothpick business” was a result of Liam Neeson never being without a toothpick after he gave up smoking.
- Hugh Grant hated the dancing scene, because he didn’t think a Prime Minister would do something like that.
- For her one-minute cameo, Claudia Schiffer received a reported £200,000 (roughly $300,000 U.S.).
- Jack and Judy’s job was a source of confusion for many viewers. The characters were lighting doubles for a film shoot, so their job is to place themselves in the positions that the film’s stars will later be in so that the lighting and camera crews can arrange the lights and focus the cameras for specific scenes without bothering the actual stars for the hours it can take to prepare to shoot a scene. Lighting doubles, unlike body doubles, or stunt doubles, do not appear in the actual film, but they do need to have the same coloring and basic size as the actor for whom they are doubling, hence Jack’s comment about doubling for Brad Pitt–even though their faces do not look much alike, Martin Freeman and Pitt have similar hair and skin tones.
- The video for Billy Mack’s (Bill Nighy’s) “Christmas is All Around” single is a reference to a series of memorable, and very popular, videos that Robert Palmer had done – “Addicted to Love”, “Simply Irresistible”, and “I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On” – in which Palmer sang in a good suit, backed up by an all-female band, all dressed alike, and dancing in a back-and-forth manner.
- Writer and director Richard Curtis, and other members of the production, had a forty-five minute meeting to determine what color underwear Aurelia (Lúcia Moniz) would wear for the lake scene.
- In the version edited and broadcast in the U.S. on the ABC Family Channel, the entire subplot of John and Just Judy (the characters in the ersatz “porn” movie) was completely edited out, and, even with those and other cuts, this movie ran three hours with commercials.
- In a 2017 interview published in Empire Magazine, writer and director Richard Curtis recounts that Universal Pictures chairman Stacey Snider told him that this movie would make $50 million less at the box office if he kept all of the nude scenes in. But Curtis felt that as a teenager, he only went to the movies to see some nudity, and he didn’t want to let his younger self down.
- On the DVD audio commentary, Richard Curtis said that the Mark’s (Andrew Lincoln’s) homemade video montage showing only close-ups of Juliet (Keira Knightley) from her wedding day was inspired by the end of the movie, Cinema Paradiso (1988), where the main character made a montage of all of the kissing scenes that had previously been censored out from all of the movies that were shown in the Cinema Paradiso.
- This was the most rented DVD in the U.K. in 2004.
- Thomas Brodie-Sangster is the second cousin once removed of Hugh Grant.
- The Diane Warren penned track “Too Lost in You”, performed by Sugababes, appeared in the U.K. version, but was replaced by Kelly Clarkson’s “The Trouble With Love” in the U.S. release. Writer and director Richard Curtis felt bad for the members of the British band, Keisha Buchanan, Mutya Buena and Heidi Range, as they missed out on exposure in USA. To make up for it, he later placed them on the soundtrack for his movie About time (2013). Heidi Range went on to name her daughter Aurelia, after the character in this movie.
- Early in the casting process, Richard Curtis expressed interest in casting an actual rock star for the role of Billy Mack, and considered David Bowie, Sting, Mick Jagger and Peter Gabriel for the role, but producers thought an actual rock star would make major demands to the script and music choices, so they convinced Curtis to cast an actor instead.
- With the exception of Sam’s running through the airport scenes, and the footage of people greeting each other, all airport scenes were filmed on a built set, which cost most of the budget for the movie. Some of these scenes include Colin Frissell (Kris Marshall) leaving for, and arriving in Wisconsin, and Sam (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) shouting at Joanna Anderson (Olivia Olson) through the glass, and all footage of the actors and actresses at the airport.
- The dolls that Dame Emma Thompson holds up are Ken dolls dressed in drag. Richard Curtis just asked the prop people to take Ken and put him in dresses. Thompson had such a difficult time with the scene, saying she just could not lift the dolls knowing that they were Ken in drag, but in the end she gave in and shot the scene.
- Andrew Lincoln has stated in interviews that looking back, his character Mark is creepy and inappropriate in his behavior, and that he wished they would have rewritten his scenes to make him appear more reasonable and normal about his feelings for Juliet.
- For the role of her lovelorn character Karen, Emma Thompson has said that she drew on the immense heartbreak she experienced over former husband Kenneth Branagh’s affair with Helena Bonham Carter with whom he had co-starred, and directed in Frankenstein (1994).
- Olivia Olson (Joanna Anderson) went on to play another love interest of Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Sam) on the television show Phineas and Ferb (2007), where Brodie-Sangster was the voice of Ferb and Olson was the voice of Vanessa.
- In 2017, a handful of the main cast members re-united for a one off special for Comic Relief. Aired on the BBC in March 2017. The sketch lasted ten minutes and followed-up on some of the cast members and their lives in 2017. One highlight was Hugh Grant dancing to Drake’s Hotline Bling.
- The word “actually” is spoken twenty-two times by various characters throughout this movie.
- Directorial debut of Richard Curtis.
- In the scene where Juliet watches the wedding video for the first time, Keira Knightley had to wear a hat to cover a massive spot that had blossomed on her forehead the night prior to filming.
- In the scene after Sarah leaves Harry’s office following their conversation about her feelings for co-worker Karl, two clocks can be seen on the wall, showing the time in New York City and Brazil. Laura Linney (Sarah) is from New York City, and Rodrigo Santoro (Karl) is from Brazil.
- The vicar used for Peter and Juliet’s wedding was a real vicar.
- For Brazilian movie posters, and VHS/DVD/Blu-ray covers, the image of Bill Nighy was replaced with one of Rodrigo Santoro.
- Richard Curtis wanted Michael Parkinson to appear as a talk show host, and Michael accepted without hesitation.
- The property surrounding the house, in which Jamie (Colin Firth) stays in France, including the dock that was specially built for this movie, were heavily damaged by fire during the 2003 heat wave, but the house survived.
- Jo Whiley and Wes Butters appeared as cameo voices in the movie as disc jockeys, who were on Radio 1 at the time. Emma Freud worked as a Screenwriter for this movie, and was also a Radio 1 DJ in 1994.
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