‘Love Actually’ turns 20 (!): Here are 12 fun facts about the ultimate Christmas movie

It’s been twenty years since the romantic comedy ‘Love Actually’ came out. The film has now become a Christmas classic and is shown numerous times on television every December.

You probably know the movie by heart too. But you probably didn’t know these 12 fun facts:

The beginning and end of “Love Actually” take place at Heathrow Airport in London. You see people hugging their loved ones. But all these people are not actors; they were filmed with hidden cameras. If the film crew managed to capture a beautiful moment, they had to react quickly and run after people with a consent form.

Hugh Grant and director Richard Curtis disagreed for a long time about how the Prime Minister should be played. Grant wanted a down-to-earth interpretation, while Curtis wanted to make the role a bit more whimsical.

Only on the very last day of filming did they film the iconic dance scene. The song was supposed to be a Jackson 5 song, but they didn’t get the rights to it.

The design team first created the signs, but then Andrew Lincoln asked if he could write them himself. “I ended up having to kind of trace the art department’s handwriting so that it’s my handwriting, but with a sort of pencil stencil underneath,” he told Entertainment Weekly.

Originally, there were fourteen love stories in the film instead of ten. Two stories were shortened when the script was written, the other two were shot and only cut in post-production.

One of the stories was about a girl in a wheelchair. In another, a boy records an entire album for a girl in his class, but she then has an affair with his drummer. The third story was short and told about an African couple who supported each other during a famine. This story has been removed due to time constraints. The last story to be removed was about a school principal and her sick partner.

Olivia Olson, then nine years old, got the role of Joanna. Since the character has to sing, she blew the casting directors away with her voice. But she sang ‘All I Want For Christmas’ so flawlessly that Curtis feared it would sound artificial. He asked the sound engineers to add breathing to the recording to make it more believable.

The character, played by Rowan Atkinson, was originally intended to be more than just a compassionate and overzealous department store clerk. Rufus was originally intended as a heavenly helper. There was even a scene filmed where he disappeared into thin air after helping Sam get through security at Heathrow.

“But eventually the film became so complex that the idea of ​​introducing an extra level of supernatural beings became too much,” says Curtis in a commentary on the DVD extra.

A character named Bernard appears in every Curtis film and is always a joke. In ‘Love Actually’ he is the ‘terrible’ son of Emma Thompson’s character. It all stems from a love triangle in which a man named Bernard won the heart of Curtis’ crush, Anne. In reality his name is Bernard Jenkin, he is a successful politician and still married to Anne.

Curtis also deliberately named Colin Firth’s character after his own brother so the kids could say, “I hate Uncle Jamie!”

The lake Jamie and Aurelia jump into to rescue his text messages was actually only 18 inches deep. Colin Firth and Lúcia Moniz pretended to be swimming, but were on their knees the entire time.

And a total of 23 times.

For his role as Sam, Thomas Brodie Sangster had to learn to play the drums. His father taught him at the time and he still plays the instrument.

At least a short one. In 2017, a 15-minute sequel was produced for Red Nose Day, a fundraising campaign for needy children and young people in Britain. It shows what became of the characters and what they do many years later.

According to Curtis, ‘Love Actually’ was not initially intended as a Christmas film. Initially it was also planned that it would be made into two films, one telling the story of Hugh Grant and the other about the character of Colin Firth.

However, he never imagined that “Love Actually” would be one of those Christmas movies that people watch every year.