The Love Actually Special

Things you probably didn't know about the classic

What could be more fitting, exactly a week before Christmas, than to talk about the favorite Christmas movie of our editorial team? For me, it's already scheduled for next Monday, somewhere at the end of the afternoon, comfortably on the couch with my mother. Love Actually remains one of those films you can still watch after about twenty times. But I bet there are still a few facts about the movie that you didn't know, even if you've seen it a thousand times? Here they come:

Everything filmed at the airport was done with hidden cameras

What they did was place hidden cameras at Heathrow Airport for about a week, and at the moments they realized a beautiful reunion was happening, they filmed it, and if they wanted to use the footage, a team from the film raced to the people to ask for permission to use the footage for Love Actually. It's already nice to be filmed for Hello Goodbye, but how cool is it to have a genuine reunion immortalized in one of the most popular films in the world?

Four storylines were cut

Initially, the plan was to have a total of 14 love stories in the film; two of them were removed during the writing of the script, the other two had already been filmed but were cut out during editing. One of them revolved around a girl in a wheelchair, and the other was about a boy who writes a love song for a girl in his class, but unfortunately, she ends up running off with a drummer.

If you watch the film on TV, you often miss part of it

Well, not in the Netherlands, but in countries like England and America, certain scenes are sometimes cut out because they are considered too, well, inappropriate to show on TV. Think of the scene with John and Judy where they play stand-ins for porn actors.

The role of Hugh Grant's love interest in the film was written especially for her

He wanted her (Martine McCutcheon) so badly that he, screenwriter Richard Curtis, named her character Martine at the beginning, when the script was still being written. This was later changed to Natalie.

Hugh Grant actually didn't want to dance at all

Pffff, can you imagine, Love Actually without the famous dance scene of Hugh Grant? Can't. Just. Not. He kept postponing it because he genuinely didn't want to do it. And especially not when it became known that they couldn't use the original song, a song by the Jackson 5. Eventually, it was filmed on the last day of shooting and was done so well that it was one of the hardest scenes to cut and edit, because they would have preferred to use everything they had filmed.

The romantic sign text for Keira Knightley was written by the actor himself

Okay, actor Andrew Lincoln didn't come up with the text himself, but he did handwrite the signs.

Bill Nighy didn't even realize he was auditioning for the film

He thought he was just helping read the script together with the film's casting director Mary Selway, a ‘favor’, as he called it, because he assumed she just wanted to hear it out loud. And then suddenly he was offered the role of rocker Billy Mack. I couldn't have imagined a better actor for his role.

Emma Thompson's crying scene had to be filmed 12 times

The heartbreaking moment when she finds out her husband is cheating and plays the song ‘Both Sides Now’ by Joni Mitchell – this required twelve takes. Here by the way, you can read whether anything happened between her and her husband.

The real prime minister at the time was indeed troubled by the beloved fake prime minister from the film

Tony Blair had said the following during an interview in 2005 when he received criticism about the relationships England had with the United States: ‘I know there’s a bit of us that would like me to do a Hugh Grant in Love Actually 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 consequence of easy applause.’

The film has been remade three times

Not exactly the same, of course, but the idea of interwoven love stories is there. Our own ‘Alles is Liefde’, the Polish ‘Letters to St. Nicolas’, the Japanese ‘It all Began When I Met You’, and in India, they made the film ‘A Tribute To Love’. So, if you're a fan of Love Actually and were looking for movie tips: now you know what to watch.