General Comments
Richard Curtis's friends
have come out to support their friend's film and attended the film premieres.
John Lloyd, who worked with Curtis when producing Not the Nine O'Clock
News and Blackadder for the BBC, said: 'Richard seems to be the British
Spielberg, he has the golden touch. Some people just know what's going
to be an enormous hit. Richard is a great spreader of joy both as a person
and in the stuff he makes. You can't complain about somebody who is trying
to make life more pleasurable.'
Director Richard Curtis, who was behind the other British classics Four
Weddings And A Funeral, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones's Diary, joked that
he had squeezed nine movies into one....Thompson said the film showed many
different kinds of love. Her own character, Karen, suffers heartbreak when
her husband, played by Rickman, has an affair. She said: Hugh and I were
vicious about sentimentality but there was a very good cast and Richard
Curtis is very good about stopping with a gag before you get into marshmallow.....[Rowan]
Atkinson said he had not even seen the movie yet but described it as very,
very heartwarming and optimistic....Among the other stars at the premiere
was Joan Collins, who said the film was bloody good. (The
New Scotsman)
"Love Actually" could have taken place any old time, but writer-director
Richard Curtis -- who wrote "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "Notting
Hill" -- said "Christmas is the time when you sort of have a go at things
romantic. ... It's the time when love is most likely to burst out both
in its happy and sad forms, and people are most likely to say the unsayable."
The
Gleaner
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 "Working
Title in whatever incarnation (over the years) has done everything that
Richard has ever written," Bevan pointed out. "It started with a little
picture called 'The Tall Guy' in the '80s (starring Jeff Goldblum, Emma
Thompson and Rowan Atkinson). Then he wrote 'Four Weddings and a Funeral.'
Then he co-wrote 'Bean.' Then he wrote 'Notting Hill.' Then he co-wrote
'Bridget Jones's Diary.' And then he wrote and directed 'Love Actually.'
Since 1987, when I first met him basically on 'The Tall Guy,' he's always
been a writer who's been all over his work. He's kind of had a 'producer'
role, particularly on the films where he's been a single-credit writer.
So he's been involved in a very intimate way in all of those films through
working with us on choosing who should direct them and who should be in
them, being on the set all the time and then particularly on all of the
movies he's been very, very involved in the cutting room.
[W]hen we came to cast 'Love Actually,' Richard had a pretty clear idea
on the principals as to who he wanted. As a British phenomenon, which Richard
is, if a British actor gets sent a script by Richard Curtis, then they're
going to do it. He's one of those lucky people -- who he wants, he gets.
Then, inevitably, there's a juggle, but at the end of the day they're all
in pretty small vignettes and on the whole with the vignettes we shot them
in a lump basically so that it worked."..."A number of the key [roles]
like Hugh, who plays the Prime Minister, Martine, who plays Natalie (working
on the PM's household staff), several of them he had in his mind when he
was writing. And Colin, obviously, because Colin had worked on 'Bridget
Jones' and Emma because Emma was in 'The Tall Guy.' There is a company
in a funny sort of way. There's a method to the madness. Then beyond that
it is a juggle and we are very lucky that people like Liam Neeson, for
instance, agreed to come on board because he hasn't done a film back here
(in the U.K.) for a long time."
 Production
was done at the end of last year [2002]. "There's a charity called Comic
Relief here as, indeed, there is in America. But the British Comic Relief
was the first one that Richard actually started. Every two years they have
a massive night where they take over one of the TV channels and they raise
a huge amount of money. So every two years he does that. We shot the film
leading up to the end of 2002 and put it to one side until after Comic
Relief in April and since then we've been in post-production.
The people who worked on the picture in the key jobs had all worked before
with Curtis. (Director of photography) Mickey Coulter, who worked on 'Four
Weddings' and 'Notting Hill,' so he's been part of that team for a while.
There's a sort of team that work on a lot of our movies, whether they're
Richard's movies or not. So that was kind of the backbone (in production).
There's a shorthand between people and they work very well together. Like
Jim Clay, the production designer, did 'About A Boy' and 'Captain Corelli's
Mandolin,' so he's part of the sort of Working Title team. And Joanna Johnston,
who's the costume designer, has done about 'About A Boy' and way back she
did 'French Kiss' with us. There's a bunch of people who've worked together
a lot." (Tim Bevan, Hollywood Reporter
article 15/10/03)
In Hugh Grant’s first scene, we did the long shot when he arrives at Downing
Street before lunch, and the close- ups of him and Martine after lunch.
During lunch he took a rest. When he woke up, he put on the wrong tie and
no one noticed. If you look carefully the prime minister swaps ties 11
times’ during the scene. (Richard
Curtis)
Helder Costa, who plays Aurelia’s father, is probably Portugal’s greatest
theatre director. It’s like having Trevor Nunn or Stephen. Daldry playing
a bit-part in your film. Unfortunately, no one told me this so I spent
the twó days we were working together giving him really pathetic
notes, and acting out how I wanted it to be and saying," louder, louder
"and "come on ! Be better, better". And then the morning before he left
he came downstairs and gave me a 400 page coffee-table book about his life,
work and theatre company. So when you see the bit in the film with the
Portuguese bloke in a string vest, please look at him with a little more
respect than I did. (Richard Curtis)
Stories cut out of the original screenplay; the one about the gay
schoolgirls, the one about the Lucian Freud pictures discovered in a beach
hut, the one about my friend [composer] Howard [Goodall] and the unfortunate
incident in the recording studio, the one about the man who meets Debbie
Harry on the subway— and the one about the time my friend Helen Fielding
actually fell-asleep while out on a date with me and I had to finish my
dinner, in a crowded restaurant, while she sat with her face flat on the
table, snoring gently. (Richard
Curtis)
 When
the script got down to about two and a half hours, we thought it was OK
and handed it in to our producers. We then had a read through with some
fantastic actors and realised it wasn’t OK at all and changed it again.
Then we had another read-through with the full cast and then we changed
it a bit again. Then we shot the film and it went back to three and a half
hours. Not only that — three and a half hours in totally the wrong order
with no jokes. That first viewing was not a good day. Then we started to
edit. (Richard Curtis)
Curtis says he didn't find it such a challenge to write such a dense story
peopled with so many characters. "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," says Curtis. "So I decided that I would
try to write nine or 10 of them all at the same time." (NY
Post 2/11/03)
"Bernard" is a recuring name in the Richard Curtis universe, in Love Actually,
Bernard is a ten year old boy.
Locations:
Principal
photography began on September 2, 2002 and continued for 13 weeks with
shooting on soundstages and on locations in and around London (private
residences, various businesses, a church, a chaple, Selfridges department
store, a school, a boating base, the South Bank and even a racecourse building
standing in for an American airport). Also Curtis conceived of the opening
and closing scenes happening in a place that truly demonstrates his point
behind Love Actually--an arrivals hall at Heathrow Aiport.
Production went very smoothly, [Tim Bevan] observed, with "no hiccups on
this one. It's been quite a blessed film in that respect. It's a lot like
'Four Weddings.' On 'Four Weddings,' nothing really went wrong in the making
of it and nothing really went wrong in the making of this picture either.
Everyone got on. The biggest risk was Richard because he hadn't directed
and he took to that like a duck to water. I remember the first stuff we
shot was down in France on Colin's sector, where he's down there (searching
for the girl he loves who's now returned home from London). On the first
day, one was worried and by lunch time one wasn't worried."
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Comments
on Colin
 There
is a scene in which Colin Firth and Lúcia Moniz who plays Aurelia
swim in an apparently deep lake The truth is the Iake was fine when we
originally saw it, but by the time we arrived was 18 inches deep. Our two
actors are kneeling and pretending to swim. In the rushes at the
end of every take you can see them stand up and the water only comes up
to their knees. During the filming, Colin was bitten by a vicious, malarial
gadfly — his elbow swelled up like an avocado and were he not a saint,
he would have sued us for the entire profits of the film. (Richard
Curtis, The Telegraph 10/25/03)
Equally satisfying in a more unashamedly romantic way is the story of Jamie
(Colin Firth), a jilted author with no foreign-language facility who retreats
to the south of France and takes on a severe looking housekeeper named
Aurelia (Lúcia Moniz) who speaks only Portuguese. (LA Times
review 11/14/03) 
Lúcia Moniz: "Colin was a complete gentleman from the start to finish.
He had a wonderful sense of humor and he helped me with all the scenes,
even in the scenes he wasn't in. I was very grateful for the help". (?)
The most poignant of the episodes in the film centers on a lonely writer
(Colin Firth) visiting France where he gets to admire and love his Portuguese
housekeeper (Lucia Moniz) who doesn't know English. The linguistic barrier
leads to mildly funny events but the script is more concerned in portraying
the slowly evolving love between the two. There are many charming and funny
moments when the writer returns to France from England in the hope
of proposing to the young woman. rediff.com
And of course, there's Colin Firth. As a heart-broken writer, he heads
to France to work on a novel, only to meet and befriend his Portuguese
housekeeper (Lucia Moniz). Their tale is devastatingly sweet, but lightened
up by the language boundary. The Flat
Hat
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Comments
by Colin
Firth plays a novelist, ditched by his girlfriend, who goes off to France
to recover. There he meets and falls in love with a Portuguese housekeeper
played by Lucia Moniz. In one of the film’s most romantic scenes, Moniz
strips off and dives into a lake to fish out a manuscript he has been working
on, echoing, I suggest, his own iconic soaking in Pride and Prejudice.
“I don’t think that scene was written for me,” he says, shaking his head.
“It was in place before I had the part.” (Beau
Selecta, Sunday Herald 11/16/03)
Firth
had worked with [Richard] Curtis as a writer when he adapted Bridget Jones’
Diary and understands his unique sense of humour. “He really does have
this fantastically intelligent and self-deprecating wit that you associate
with the films that he writes,” Firth observes. “He is doing something,
which however mainstream it is, is quite different from what other people
do and I think that it is actually only mainstream because he single-handedly
made it so. It is quite hard to write about middle-class professional people,
which is usually the stuff of sitcoms, but he actually manages to get some
drama out of it.” Firth says that is especially evident in Love Actually,
which is not all chuckles and guffaws. “Great drama comprises both comedy
and tragedy, and I think Richard has been able to enmesh both and bring
a genuine humanity to his work.”...
“For me it was a simple pleasure from beginning to end. I think it was
easy to say that because in some ways I could just jump right in and feel
so little pressure as I’m not carrying the film. My whole story line could
have been a total catastrophe and it wouldn’t be the end of the world.
I decided to see what would happen if I just allowed myself to be carried
by someone who hasn’t proved himself to be a master of this form. Also
when my stuff was confined to the South of France, the schedule started
with my scenes so it felt like it was my little movie for a while. Thus
it was just easy to have a good time and get things right in 3 weeks.”
Firth says he found it difficult to relate to the bumbling romantic he
plays, mainly, he insists, “because I don’t feel like him at all or think
I’m as nice as that guy. I wouldn’t be as patient and self-deprecating.”
Nor as romantic, as he sees himself as “sporadically romantic which means
that I don’t have a permanent romantic view of life,” says the cynical
Firth. "I'm interested in emotion, its complications," he adds. "I'm not
necessarily an optimist in terms of romantic love. I'm not the type of
romantic who enjoys the weepy movie and then sighs sweetly about it. I'm
more interested in the obstacles and the impossible than I am in resolution
and happiness." (Dark
Horizon 29/10/03)
I think every single discerning person on this film felt we were in danger
of drowning in syrup if we did not end up with something substantial....The
bottom line is that it completely wins you over, it sweeps you up. The
New Scotsman
 The
actor, renowned for his performances as two Mister Darcy's (Pride and Prejudice
and Bridget Jones's Diary), was intrigued by the script's premise and offers,
"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."
One celeb who perhaps isn't looking forward to Christmas as much as others
is Colin Firth....The 'Love Actually' star admits he still has nightmares
about the big day because of a bad childhood experience: "I remember electrocuting
myself on the Christmas tree lights. I remember actually finding a socket
and sticking my finger in it and lighting the Christmas tree up - literally.
I can remember the pain involved in that. I've always associated Christmas
tree lights with pain as a result of that. I also remember wondering why
Santa Claus has such appalling teeth, and realising that this was my grandfather's
attempt to disguise himself on his Santa visit. He'd got some horrible
false teeth from somewhere!" BBC Radio 1 News
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