Trivia for
Love Actually (2003) More at IMDbPro »

• Portuguese actress Lúcia Moniz, who plays the maid Aurelia, got the part as a result of a joke by a friend of hers who is a casting director and sent her photos to the movie's casting director. Lúcia went to the casting and ended up being chosen.
  
  
• The scene where Kris Marshall's character Colin (accidentally) insults the caterer's food to her face, was originally written as a scene for Hugh Grant's character in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), but was cut from that film.
  
  
• When David arrives at No. 10 Downing Street, his tie changes 11 times between shots when meeting Natalie. Apparently, Hugh Grant had changed his tie after a post-lunch nap and no one noticed at first. They decided to "play with it" and went all out and changed the tie 11 times just for the heck of it.
  
  
• Cameo: [Rebecca Frayn] Daniel's dead wife, Joanna, in slideshow during the funeral scene.
  
  
• Although Karen refers to David as her "big brother", Emma Thompson is actually 17 months older than Hugh Grant.
  
  
• When Sam is running to say goodbye to Joanna at the airport, he sees her at the gate and taps a glass window calling out her name. This is a clear reference to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate (1967).
  
  
• Directorial debut of Richard Curtis.
  
  
• One of the working titles is "Love Actually is All Around" taken from the Troggs' song "Love is All Around", written by Troggs lead singer Reg Presley. This song is featured in this film in the very beginning, but the lyrics are changed by Bill Nighy's character, who turns it into a Christmas song.
  
  
• Rowan Atkinson's character was initially supposed to be an angel and disappear as he walked away from Liam Neeson's character in the airport scene.
  
  
• The airport greeting footage at the beginning and end of the film is real. Richard Curtis had a team of cameramen film at Heathrow airport for a week, and whenever they saw something that would fit in they asked the people involved for permission to use the footage.
  
  
• Olivia Olson (Joanna - Sam's crush), does all her own singing in "All I Want for Christmas is You" at the Christmas concert. She had such an amazing voice that the director had it edited so it sounded more like a child singing.
  
  
• When Hugh Grant answers the phone in the scene following his showing up of the President of the USA, he ad-libs that he is "very busy and important". Renée Zellweger types the same thing to Grant in Bridget Jones's Diary (2001).
  
  
• Simon Pegg was considered for the role of Rufus.
  
  
• Kate Ashfield was considered for the role of Sarah.
  
  
• In France, the film was mainly distributed dubbed in French. The sequences where Jamie goes to France and speaks French wouldn't have worked. So strangely, Eleonore and Jamie speak Italian when he arrives to his holiday house.
  
  
• Is the most rented DVD in the UK in 2004.
  
  
• "Christmas is All Around", the tacky joke theme song sung by Bill Nighy was actually released in Britain in hopes that it would be "Number 1 for Christmas 2003".
  
  
• The song "Christmas Is All Around" is a cover of The Troggs' "Love Is All Around". The version by Wet Wet Wet featured in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) was at number one in the UK charts for 15 weeks in 1994, and Richard Curtis thought it would be amusing to start this film with the same song that had driven everyone to distraction nine years earlier.
  
  
• The property surrounding the house in which Colin Firth's character stays in France, including the dock that was specially built for the film, were heavily damaged by fire during the 2003 heat wave, but the house survived.
  
  
• The video for Billy Mack's "Christmas is All Around" single is a clear reference to the Robert Palmer video for "Addicted to Love".
  
  
• The idea for Mark's surprise of the band singing "All You Need Is Love" at Peter and Juliet's wedding came from Jim Henson's funeral (which Richard Curtis attended) where all the puppeteers brought their Muppets and sung a song.
  
  
• Most of Edward Hardwicke's role was removed from the final print.
  
  
• The school used for the Nativity Concert at the end of the film is Elliott School, Putney, South West London and is where Pierce Brosnan went to school until he was 15.
  
  
• The word "actually" is spoken 22 times by various characters in the film
  
  
• Anne Reid's and Frances de la Tour's scenes were deleted. Reid played the school headmistress and de la Tour her lover. The clips feature as DVD extras.
  
  
• Thomas Sangster didn't know how to play the drums when he was cast. Fortunately for him, his father, Mark Sangster, plays the drum and taught Thomas how to play them. Thomas discusses this in the DVD commentary.
  
  
• With the exception of Sam's running through the airport scenes and the footage of people greeting each other, all airport scenes were filmed on a built set, which cost most of the budget for the movie. Some of these scenes include Colin leaving for and arriving in "Wisconsin" and Sam shouting at Joanna through the glass, and all footage of the actors at the "airport".
  
  
• The vicar used for Peter and Juliet's wedding is a real vicar.
  
  
• According to Richard Curtis in the DVD commentary, they had to put Emma Thompson in a "fat suit" to make her appear heavier because she is actually a very thin woman.
  
  
• The lake that Lúcia Moniz and Colin Firth are "swimming" in was actually only eighteen inches deep and they had to kneel down and pretend to be in deeper water. It was also over-run by mosquitoes and Colin Firth was badly bitten and his elbow swelled up to the size of an avocado, requiring medical attention.
  
  
• When casting the part of Sarah, Richard Curtis auditioned a great many British girls, but kept saying, "I want someone like Laura Linney..." The casting director eventually snapped and said, "Oh, for fuck's sake, get Laura Linney then." She then auditioned and got the part.
  
  
• Kris Marshall returned his pay check for the scene where the three American girls undress him. He said he had such a great time having three girls undress him for 21 takes, that he was willing to do it for free, and thus returned his check for that day.
  
  
• When Richard Curtis was in college, his girlfriend left him for a man named Bernard. In each of his screenplays, there is a fairly unpopular character named Bernard. In this case, the character is Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman's "horrid son".
  
  
• Richard Curtis and other members of the production had a 45 minute meeting to determine what color underwear Lucia's character would wear for the lake scene.
  
  
• The dolls that Emma Thompson holds up are Ken dolls dressed in drag. Richard Curtis just asked the prop people to take Ken and put him in dresses. Emma Thompson had such a difficult time with the scene, saying she just could not lift the dolls knowing that they were Ken in drag, but in the end she gave in and shot the scene.
  
  
• Number 10 Downing Street in the movie is not, of course, the actual Prime Minister's residence, but a replica. The exterior was created in the Shepperton Studios car park and the interior is a set. In preparation for the movie, writer-director Richard Curtis and his production designer Jim Clay were escorted on a two-hour tour of the actual Number 10 by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown (who became Prime Minister in June 2007). They were not permitted to take photographs or make sketches of the interiors, and throughout the entire tour they were flanked by security. The "Number 10" that appears in the movie was designed by Clay, solely from memory.
  
  
• When deciding to cast the part of the Prime Minister, Anthony Hopkins, Michael Gambon and Michael Crawford were possible candidates. But all three had been unavailable at the time of filming (Hopkins was working on The Human Stain (2003), Gambon on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) and Crawford had returned to Broadway to star in the American version of 'Dance of the Vampires').
  
  
• When David (Hugh Grant) addresses his speech to the press, after the meeting with the President of the United States, he talks about the great things about Britain and candidly mentions 'Harry Potter.' Several actors from this film have ties to the Harry Potter film series. 'Emma Thompson' and Alan Rickman both appeared in the Harry Potter movies as teachers, 'Sybil Trelawney' and 'Severus Snape'. In addition, 'Hugh Grant' was set to appear in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) and was originally cast as Gilderoy Lockhart. Grant left the film due to scheduling conflicts.
  
  
• All 4 leading stars of Sense and Sensibility (1995), technically appear in this film, with Grant, Thompson and Rickman playing leading roles, and Kate Winslet appearing in stock footage of James Cameron's Titanic (1997).
  
  
• In the Czech Republic, the movie went by the name "Heavenly Love" (a saying expressing "The greatest love possible").
  
  
• In Russian-language markets the film's title is "Realnaya lyubov" (Real Love).
  
  
• The wedding videotape of Keira Knightley was inspired by the final scene of Nuovo cinema Paradiso (1988) when the film maker finds the reel of kissing scenes.
  
  
• For the "clean" TV version of the film, the lines "Now let's get pissed and watch porn" and "Where the f - - is my f - -ing coat?" were dubbed as "Now let's have a drink and watch some telly" and "Where in the world is my bloomin' coat?".
  
  
• In the scene in Milwaukee, a Budweiser is ordered, even though Milwaukee was the home to 3 of its major competitors: Miller, Pabst, and Schlitz.
  
  
• (At 59:07) When Daniel says "We need Kate and we need Leo and we need them now", a toothpick can be seen in Daniel's left hand as he says "now". Later, Sam has a toothpick in his mouth (at 59:47) while he and Daniel are lounging on a couch. What director Richard Curtis describes as "this toothpick business" was a result of Liam Neeson never being without a toothpick after he gave up smoking. [Mentioned in DVD commentary after 59:47.]
  
  
• In the scene after Sarah leaves Harry's office following their conversation about her feelings for coworker Karl, two clocks can be seen on the wall showing the time in New York and Brazil. Laura Linney (Sarah) is from New York and Rodrigo Santoro (Karl) is from Brazil.
  
  

• SPOILER: For her one-minute cameo, Claudia Schiffer received a reported £200,000 sterling.
  
  
• SPOILER: A speech given by Hugh Grant in ‘Love Actually’ - where he extols the virtues of Great Britain and refuses to cave to the pressure of its longstanding ally, the United States - was etched in the transatlantic memory as a satirical, wishful statement on the concurrent Bush-Blair relationship. Tony Blair responded by saying in 2005, "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 consequences of easy applause."
  
  

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