20 things you didn't know about Love Actually

Love Actually: one of my absolute favorite movies. Well, a bit cliché but true. There are only a few movies that I have seen hundreds of times and this is one of them. This movie just makes me laugh (and cry) every single time. I can now practically dream the story, but today I came across some new and funny facts about the film. Hopefully, they surprise you just as much.

1. Love Actually shouldn't have been a Christmas movie at all.

2. The film was originally supposed to consist of fourteen love stories, but four of them did not make it in.

3. The daughter of director Richard Curtis plays one of the lobsters in the scene.

4. Hugh Grant (the Prime Minister) and Thomas Brodie-Sangster (Sam) are related. They are second cousins.

5. Colin Firth (Jamie) was constantly bitten by mosquitoes during the lake scene. It was so bad that his elbow swelled up to the size of an avocado.

6. There was a meeting that lasted no less than 45 minutes about what color underwear Aurelia should wear for the lake scene.

7. Hugh Grant found the dance scene so terrible to shoot that he postponed it until the last day of filming. Once he got started, he gave it his all and lip-synced to the song.

8. Keira Knightley (Juliet) was only seventeen when she acted in the film. Thomas Brodie-Sangster is only four years younger than Keira, so he was thirteen. Quite strange, right?

9. Love Actually was only the second film Keira Knightley acted in. When the director asked what her next project would be, she replied that she probably made a mistake by acting in a pirate movie. Nothing could be further from the truth, as Pirates of the Caribbean became a huge success.

10. Claudia Schiffer earned a whopping £200,000 for her scene in the film.

11. Emma Thompson (Karen) had to wear a fat suit for her role in the film.

12. The word ‘actually’ is mentioned 22 times by the characters.

13. Thomas Brodie-Sangster's father taught him to drum specifically for the film.

14. The character of Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) is based on John Lennon, John McEnroe, and Bob Dylan.

15. In every Richard Curtis film, there is an unpleasant character named ‘Bernard’. In Love Actually, the problematic son of Karen (Emma Thompson) and Harry (Alan Rickman) is named Bernard. The filmmaker always names an unsympathetic character Bernard because this is the boy who ran off with the girl he had a crush on in his youth.

16. In the film, you see Liam Neeson (Daniel) a few times with a toothpick in his mouth. He had just quit smoking and used a toothpick as a ‘replacement’ for cigarettes.

17. The DVD of the film was the most rented in the United Kingdom in 2004.

18. Several remakes of the film have been made. The Indian version is called ‘A Tribute to Love’, the Polish version is called ‘Letters to St. Nicolas’, and the Japanese version is called ‘It All Began When I Met You.’

19. Richard Curtis gave Colin Firth's character the name Jamie so that the kids in the film could shout ‘I hate uncle Jamie’. This was a joke towards his brother, who is named Jamie.

20. Andrew Lincoln (Mark) personally wrote the text on the papers with which he declares his love to Juliet at her door. He suggested this himself to the team because he thought his own handwriting was quite nice.