Love Actually

From the new bachelor Prime Minister (Hugh Grant) instantly falling in love with a refreshingly real member of the staff (Martine McCutcheon) moments after entering 10 Downing Street…

To a writer (Colin Firth) escaping to the south of France to nurse his broken heart who finds love in a lake…From a comfortably married woman (Emma Thompson) suspecting that her husband (Alan Rickman) is slipping away… To a new bride (Keira Knightley) mistaking the distance of her husband’s best friend for something it’s not…From a schoolboy seeking to win the attention of the most unattainable girl in school…To a widowed stepfather (Liam Neeson) trying to connect with a son he suddenly barely knows… From a lovelorn American girl (Laura Linney) seizing a chance with her long-tended, unspoken office crush… To an aging “seen it all, remember very little of it” rock star (Bill Nighy) having a stab at an end-of-career comeback in his own uncompromising way…Love is causing chaos for all.

These London lives and loves collide, mingle and climax on Christmas Eve - again and again and again—with romantic, hilarious and bittersweet consequences for anyone lucky or unlucky enough to be under love’s spell.

“I can’t remember how Love Actually started. I think it may be that I decided that films take me such a long time - about three years, in the end - and I thought that if I wanted to go on writing romantic films, I would spend the rest of my life doing it.

“So I decided that I would try to write nine or 10 of them all at the same time. I went away on a long holiday with my family and every day, during my walk, it was my job to come up with a story. I would think around the world that I knew, of little incidents from my past and the lives of people I knew, and slowly the storyline for Love Actually came to me,” says Curtis.

The idea of writing a film about a prime minister falling in love with someone outside of the norm first occurred to Curtis some 20 years ago. and he had Hugh Grant in mind for the role, “since he’s played such feckless people in my movies until now”.

In describing what is so special about Curtis’s work, Grant appreciates the author’s humorous and deft verbal touch and comments: “The comedy is hugely important in the success of Richard’s work, but equally important is this very rare thing of actually quite liking life.

“What I admire is that he just completely goes for it in this film and is determined to lay out his optimism in front of the world - I think people actually do quite want that. And, if you really stop for a moment and think about it, it’s as good a take on the world as ‘the glass half-empty’ view”.

Martine McCutcheon, who plays the object of the Prime Minister’s deep and instantaneous affection, says: “What’s interesting to me is that this is about different types of love with their different challenges and different temptations - that there’s love all around us all the time. That’s kind of a romantic view, but it’s also true as well.

“The script is written in such a real way. There are those embarrassing moments when you love someone and those moments when nothing else matters. Richard’s really captured that - he is guaranteed to make you laugh at a moment where you feel like you are going to cry. I’d say that’s kind of his stamp”.

Another storyline sees Liam Neeson playing a recently widowed man picking up the pieces with his now motherless stepson. Neeson comments: “There is a kind of gravitas to the character, which I’m drawn to, but there are also chances to be light, and a little silly, which I loved doing.

“Richard has caught an aspect of that side of humanity in the script - that one minute you can be terribly sad, and then be able to flip and be ‘happy’ and smiling. That’s the stuff of life”.

Colin Firth plays a writer who falls out of love with his unfaithful girlfriend, moves to the south of France and ends up falling for a young Portuguese girl, Aurelia (played by native singing star Lucia Moniz), who is hired to clean the villa.

Firth says: “The piece as a whole is a rather ambitious exercise to tell all these different kinds of love stories.

“It’s also a very ambitious exercise to use the idea of the September 11th phone calls as a starting point, with the observation that they were all to do with love of one kind or another - that if you have one chance to say something to somebody at the end of your life, no matter what sort of person you are, no matter what sort of life you’ve led, no matter how awful you’ve been, it seems that that one thing you would communicate would be some kind of message of love.

“It’s a very provocative thought and it’s a big exercise to attempt to illustrate something of that”.

Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman play a married couple with two children who have grown overly comfortable with their love for each other.

In explaining his and Thompson’s on-screen counterparts, Rickman says, “Karen and Harry both have very busy lives and that often leads to little chinks in the armour…and into one of those chinks steps a young woman called Mia who works in Harry’s office.

“It’s just like a moment in time - you turn your head one way and one thing happens, turn another way and something else happens - but like perhaps a lot of men, he had a weak moment, weak enough to give in”.

Bill Nighy, who plays veteran rock musician Billy Mack - a little the worse for wear but still rallying for a post-burnout comeback - admits to not only being a fan of Curtis but also to being a committed romantic and confesses: “I’m disabled by romanticism, and I think most people are, aren’t they? I think you have to be in some kind of trouble not to be, really”.