Love Actually is one of our all-time favourite films to watch at Christmas.
The 2003 rom-com, which boasts a star-studded cast, examines the complexities of the one emotion that connects us all: love.
Here are some surprising facts you may not have known about the movie:
The airport footage was filmed using hidden cameras
Did you know the footage from the airport is real, and not scripted?
Hidden cameras were set up at Heathrow Airport for a week, capturing the emotional moments passengers reunited with their loved ones after some time apart.
Writer-director Richard Curtis said that watching the arrival gate at LAX is what inspired him to write the film in the first place. How sweet!
Four plot lines were cut from the film
Richard Curtis initially wanted to include 14 love stories in the film.
Two were clipped in the scripting phase, but another two were shot before being deleted from the final cut.
They included one a story of an African couple supporting each other during a famine, and another about the headmistress of the school and her terminally ill partner.
Joe Alwyn auditioned to play Sam
Joe Alwyn revealed he auditioned to play Sam in the beloved Christmas movie.
Speaking on Live with Kelly and Ryan, the actor said: “It meant that I got time off of school to go to this audition, so I went to it. I didn’t get it in the end, obviously, but I remember meeting Hugh Grant and Richard Curtis and sitting down and reading some scenes.”
Thomas Brodie-Sangster ended up landing the role.
Emma Thompson shot THAT crying scene 12 times
In one of the most heartbreaking scenes of the film, Emma Thompson’s character Karen breaks down in tears as she discovers her husband, played by the late Alan Rickman, is cheating on her – after finding a necklace he bought for his mistress.
Richard Curtis recently revealed that Emma had to shoot that emotional scene 12 times.
He said: “We decided to do it like how Mike Newell did it in Four Weddings—I shot in medium-wide, and didn’t move the camera. We just let it happen, and Emma walked into the room 12 times in a row and sobbed. It was an amazing feat of acting.”
Hugh Grant did not want to do that dance
One of the most loved scenes in Love Actually is the scene where the Prime Minister, played by Hugh Grant, dances to Jump by Girls Aloud. But if it was up to Hugh, that scene would’ve never happened.
Speaking at the Love Actually 20th anniversary reunion special, he said: “I saw it in the script and I thought, ‘Well, I’ll hate doing that’. I didn’t fancy doing the dance at all, let alone rehearsing it,.”
“To this day, there’s many people, and I agree with them, who think it’s the most excruciating scene ever committed to celluloid. Then some people like it. But I will give myself this credit… it was my idea to have that secretary lady catch me. Genius.”
Richard Curtis added: “He kept saying ‘no’. I think he was hoping I’d get ill or something and we’d say, ‘Oh, well, what a shame, we’ll have to lose that dancing sequence.’”
