![]() ![]() Olivia Olson, on the other hand, was almost too musically talented for her role as Sam’s love interest Joanna. As for the Nativity performance, Thomas Brodie-Sangster had to learn the drums for his part as Sam. On a lighter note, Hugh Grant’s famous dance scene in 10 Downing Street was originally set to a Jackson 5 track-but was changed to The Pointer Sisters’ “Jump (For My Love)” at Grant’s request. Thompson notably improvised the crying-taking inspiration from the pain she felt after her former husband Kenneth Branagh left her for Helena Bonham Carter. ![]() The musicĬurtis’s favorite scene in Love Actually has a musical element: Karen ( Emma Thompson) crying to Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” after realizing Harry (Alan Rickman) is having an affair. Curtis and his production designer Jim Clay were only given a heavily supervised tour of the residence-recreating the interiors from memory at Shepperton Studios. The only place that was totally off limits to cameras? 10 Downing Street. Another fun fact: The lake that Jamie (Colin Firth) and Aurelia (Lúcia Moniz) dive into was actually just 18 inches deep and filled with mosquitos. (Yes, those are real travelers in the intro.) As for Rowan Atkinson’s brilliant cameo as a gift wrapper, it was shot in Selfridges at midnight-and was originally written with Atkinson as a Christmas angel, deliberately moving slowly to try and prevent Harry (Alan Rickman) from having an affair. Bill Nighy recorded “Christmas Is All Around” at Abbey Road Studios, while the opening and closing scenes were filmed with hidden cameras at Heathrow Airport. The film was shot at a number of iconic London locations. Curtis also intentionally named Colin Firth’s character Jamie after his own brother, just so the kids could say “I hate Uncle Jamie!” The locations In Love Actually, Bernard is Emma Thompson’s “horrid” son with Alan Rickman. David Haig plays a lovelorn Bernard in Four Weddings and a Funeral Hugh Bonneville is poor Bernie in Notting Hill and Dominic McHale appears as relative Bernard in Bridget Jones’s Diary, who goes to the cancelled tarts and vicars party dressed as an archbishop. The namesįamously, every Curtis film includes a grumpy character named Bernard for a specific reason: Tory MP Bernard Jenkin stole Curtis’s girlfriend at university. ![]() As for the housekeeper at Downing Street? She’s played by Freud’s mother. His daughter with wife Emma Freud appears as the second lobster in the Nativity, while the wise man with the Spider-Man face paint is the couple’s son. Also of note: Curtis kept the casting in the family whenever he could. Plus, he wrote handwritten letters to Laura Linney, Billy Bob Thornton, and Denise Richards to ask them to consider taking on parts. Daniel’s (Liam Neeson) love interest was meant to be played by an actor who looked like a supermodel, but when none of the women who auditioned were quite right, Curtis ended up asking Claudia Schiffer to step in. Other roles were less straightforward to cast, however. The castingĬurtis always intended for Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson to play the prime minister and his sister, and he actually wrote the part of Natalie for Martine McCutcheon after seeing her as Tiffany Mitchell in EastEnders. ![]() So this was our little stab at that.” Later in the film, Mark’s (Andrew Lincoln) famous declaration of love for Juliet takes its cues from the boards in Bob Dylan’s video for “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” Curtis apparently based the character of Mark on himself-writing five different versions of the scene to get it perfect. He explains in the film’s commentary track: “It turned out that all the guys in the memorial service had brought their puppets with them, and they lifted them up, and when you turned around and looked backwards, there were 50 puppets all singing… It was an extraordinary thing. Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Juliet’s (Keira Knightley) wedding nods to the funeral of the creator of the Muppets, Jim Henson, which Curtis attended at St. The inspirationĬurtis has claimed that it was watching loved ones reuniting at LAX that first inspired him to write *Love Actually-*and a few of the romantic comedy’s best-loved scenes also pull from life. Ahead of your annual rewatch, revisit some of the inspirations behind the screenplay and anecdotes from the set. It’s been 20 years since Richard Curtis shot his most divisive film. ![]()
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