Love Actually (2003) begins six weeks before Christmas and runs through the entire holiday season. With the exception of one subplot that takes place in part in France and Portugal and another that partially takes place in the United States, the movie is set in London. Love Actually involves ten different, interconnected stories. It is often termed a romantic comedy, which is not quite accurate given it addresses not only romantic love, but friendship, love of family, and so on. Among the stories are washed up rock star Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) trying to make a comeback with a Christmas themed cover of The Troggs' "Love is All Around ("Christmas is All Around")"; the recently elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (Hugh Grant) and the mutual attraction between him and a member of his household staff, Natalie (Martine McCutcheon); schoolboy Sam's (Thomas Sangster) crush on a classmate (Olive Olson) and his stepfather Daniel's (Liam Neeson) effort to help him win her heart; Mark (Andrew Lincoln) and his crush on his best friend's (Chiwetel Ejiofor) new bride (Keira Knightley); American expatriate Sarah (Laura Linney) and her brother Michael (Michael Fitzgerald), who is institutionalized with a mental disorder; and so on.
Love Actually marked the first time that Richard Curtis directed a feature film. He had co-created the classic television series Blackadder with Rowan Atkinson and written the screenplays for the hit movies Four Wedding and a Funeral (1994), Notting Hill (1999), and Bridget Jones's Diary (2001). Love Actually emerged from two different ideas for films. One would have centred on the newly elected prime minister who falls in love with one of his household staff. The other focused on a British author writing at a French cottage who falls for his housekeeper. Both of these plots would become stories in Love Actually. Richard Curtis gave up on both ideas as separate films, because, as he said in a Vulture article, "... they are just turning out to be a shape I know." He then decided to write a film about love and what it means. He drew inspiration from Robert Altman, whose films often dealt with multiple stories, as well as Woody Allen for the same reason, and the films Pulp Fiction (1994) and Smoke (1995), to write a movie with multiple stories about love. Initially, Love Actually was not set during the holiday season, but Richard Curtis loved Christmas movies and so he decided that he would make it a Christmas movie. At the time he had no idea that it would become one of those Christmas movies that people watch over and over again.
Originally Love Actually included fourteen different storylines. This would have made the film too long, so four of them were cut (two of which had been filmed). One short storyline involved a poster in the office of Harry (Alan Rickman) of two women in Africa. The storyline would have had the two women talking about their daughters' love lives. Another story involved Harry and Karen's (Emma Thompson) son getting into trouble at school, after which we learn the headmistress of his school is taking care of her terminally ill partner. One scene that Richard Curtis regretted cutting involved Karen addressing the death of the wife of her friend Daniel.
The casting of Love Actually was fairly straightforward and involved many actors with whom Richard Curtis had worked with in film and television before. He wanted Hugh Grant as the prime minister and Emma Thompson as his sister Karen from the very beginning. Richard Curtis had worked with Hugh Grant on Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Bridget Jones's Diary. The part of Natalie was written specifically for Martin McCutcheon, and the character was even initially called "Martine." Richard Curtis had two actors in mind for ageing rock star Billy Mack, but he couldn't make up his mind which one to ask. He finally asked casting director Mary Selway to find someone he would never have thought to ask, and so Bill Nighy was cast in the role. Of course, Richard Curtis had co-created Blackadder with Rowan Atkinson, who plays an annoying department store clerk in Love Actually, and the two had also worked together on everything from Mr. Bean to Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Central to Love Actually is its soundtrack, which features classic songs and covers of classic songs, everything from Otis Redding's version of "White Christmas" to The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows." All important to the movie is Billy Mack's Christmas themed cover of The Troggs' "Love is All Around," retitled "Christmas is All Around." "Christmas is All Around" serves as a leitmotif in Love Actually, popping in the movie from time to time. It was Wet Wet Wet's cover of "Love is All Around" that would lead to the creation of "Christmas is All Around" for Love Actually. Richard Curtis had written the screenplay for Four Weddings and a Funeral, in which Wet Wet Wet's version is featured prominently. For Love Actually, which he directed and wrote the screenplay for, Mr Curtis thought it would be funny to start the film by making the audience listen to essentially the same song again. Of course, since "Love is All Around" was changed into a Christmas song, some of the lyrics were altered. For instance, the lines "So if you really love me/Come on and let it show" were changed to "So if you really love Christmas/Come on and let it snow".
As mentioned earlier, most of the film is set in London, and it made use of some well-known landmarks in the city. Among these were Trafalgar Square; Grosvenor Chapel on South Audley Street in Mayfair, Westminster; Lambeth Bridge, the Tate Modern art gallery, Selfridge's department store, Heathrow Airport, and more. The interiors of what is 10 Downing Street in Love Actually were filmed at Shepperton Studios in Surrey, where classic movies from The Third Man (1949) to Superman (1978) had been filmed. Other film locations included Marseille, France; Vidauban, France; and Aix-En-Provence, France.
An unfinished version of Love Actually was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 7 2003. Love Actually then premiered in New York City on November 6 2003. It went into limited release in the United States on November 7 2003 and then into wide release on November 14 2003 in the United States. It premiered in London on November 16 2003 and went into wide release in the Untied Kingdom on November 21 2023. Love Actually received mixed reviews from critics. Love Actually received a largely positive review from Roger Ebert, who gave the movie three and a half stars and noted, "The movie's only flaw is also a virtue: It's jammed with characters, stories, warmth, and laughs, until at times Curtis seems to be working from a checklist of obligatory movie love situations and doesn't want to leave anything out." Writing for the BBC, Nev Pierce said of the film, "warm, bittersweet and hilarious, this is lovely, actually. Prepare to be smitten." A. O. Scott in The New York Times was largely hostile to the movie, saying, "...it is more like a record label's greatest-hits compilation or a very special sitcom clip-reel show than an actual movie." Peter Travers in The Rolling Stone gave Love Actually only two stars out of four.
While critics were mixed about Love Actually, audiences seemed to love the film. It made $244.9 million at the box office world-wide. The movie had come to be regarded as a holiday classic as early as 2013, with Emma Green writing an article titled "I Will Not Be Ashamed of Loving Love Actually" for the December 10 2013 issue of The Atlantic. A CNN story from 2016 asked, "Is Love Actually a new Christmas classic?"
The continued popularity of Love Actually would lead to a sequel of sorts in the form of a short television promotional film for Red Nose Day entitled "Red Nose Day Actually." The short was written and directed by Richard Curtis, with most of the original cast returning. The short aired in the United Kingdom on March 24 2017 and in the United States on May 24 2017.
For its 20th anniversary this year, Love Actually was re-released to theatres in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, United States, Canada, Austria, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and South Korea. This theatrical re-release also included a new 10-minute introduction. It was also re-released to home video in a 4K restoration world-wide.
Love Actually has proven to have considerable longevity. For many it has become a part of their Christmas movie-watching tradition, alongside such classics as It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street. In the United States it can be found on multiple cable channels every December. It is also available on multiple streaming services. Love Actually will probably always have its share of detractors, but it will also probably always have its loyal fans who will watch it every holiday season.
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