12 Fun Facts About 20 Years of ‘Actually in Love’

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It’s been 20 years since the romantic comedy “Love Actually” came out. The film is now a Christmas classic and is shown on television countless times every December.

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

Filmed with a hidden camera at the airport

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

Hugh Grant didn’t want to dance

Hugh Grant and director Richard Curtis had long disagreed on how to play the Prime Minister. Grant wanted a realistic portrayal, while Curtis wanted to make the role a bit more bizarre.

The famous dance scene was not filmed until the last day of filming. The song was supposed to be a Jackson 5 song, but they never got the rights to it.

Andrew Lincoln wrote the signs himself

The design team made the markings first, but then Andrew asked Lincoln if he could write them himself. “In the end, I had to trace the handwriting in the graphics section so that it was my own handwriting, but with a kind of pencil stencil underneath,” he said. He told Entertainment Weekly.

Image: Universal Studios

Four stories were deleted

Originally there were supposed to be 14 love stories in the film instead of 10. Two stories were shortened when the script was written, and the other two were filmed and not cut until post-production.

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

Olivia Olson’s performance was very good

Olivia Olson, then nine years old, got the role of Joanna. Since the character has to sing, she impressed the directors 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.

Rowan Atkinson’s character was supposed to be an angel

The character, played by Rowan Atkinson, was originally intended to be little more than a compassionate and overly enthusiastic department store clerk. Rufus was originally intended to be a heavenly assistant. There was even a scene filmed where he disappears into thin air after helping Sam get through security at Heathrow Airport.

“But in the end the film became so convoluted that the idea of ​​introducing an additional level of supernatural beings was too much,” Curtis says in the DVD bonus commentary.

Bernard is a running joke and is based on a real person

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 wins the heart of Curtis’s admirer, Anne. His name is actually Bernard Jenkin, and he is a successful politician who is still married to Anne.

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

Richard Curtis and Emma Thompson on the set of “Love Actually.”Image: Universal Pictures

The depth of the lake was only half a meter

The lake where Jimmy and Aurelia jumped to save his text messages, Its depth was actually only 45 cm. Colin Firth and Lucia Muniz were pretending to swim, but were on their knees the whole time.

Image: Universal Pictures

The word “actually” has been said many times

A total of 23 times.

Thomas Brodie-Sangster learned to play the drums

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

Image: Universal Pictures

There is a sequel

At least a short one. A 15-minute sequel was produced in 2017 for Red Nose Day, a fundraising campaign for children and young people in need in the United Kingdom. It shows what happened to the characters and what they do many years later.

It wasn’t meant to be a Christmas movie

According to Curtis “True Love” was not initially intended to be a Christmas movie. It was also supposed to be made into two filmsOne tells the story of Hugh Grant and the other tells the character of Colin Firth.

However, he never thought that “Love Actual” would be one of the Christmas movies people watch every year.

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