When it comes to holiday movies that will rip your heart out, tear it into a thousand pieces, then put it back together and somehow leave you with a restored faith in humanity, Love Actually is one of the best.
The beloved Christmas rom-com, which was released in November 2003, features an ensemble cast comprised of the late Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson and Bill Nighy, as well as then-rising stars like Keira Knightley, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, January Jones and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
By now, you're familiar with lots of trivia from the cult classic — yes, the opening scene in the airport features real people; yes, that is actually Olivia Olson belting "All I Want for Christmas Is You" — so we combed every corner of the internet to find 22 more things you need to know. Read it, re-watch Love Actually for the thousandth time, happy cry, then thank us.
1. Joe Alwyn auditioned to play Sam
One of the most iconic scenes in the movie is when a lovestruck Sam goes running through the airport to say goodbye to his young love (we're tearing up just thinking about it). While visiting Live with Kelly and Ryan in December 2018, Joe Alwyn revealed he auditioned to play the famous role.
"[The auditions] actually came about because of Zorro. I took fencing lessons, and they'll often send casting directors around to schools and community centers," Alwyn shared. "So this local community center where I took fencing lessons, this brilliant U.K. casting director, Shaheen Baig, she came around, and she saw me there."
The actor recalled taking time off school to audition for the part, which involved a series of workshops. "I didn't get it in the end, obviously, but I do remember meeting Hugh Grant and [writer-director] Richard Curtis and sitting down and reading some scenes.”
The role eventually went to Brodie-Sangster.
2. Keira Knightley wore that big hat to cover up a zit
“I had a massive spot in the middle of my forehead,” Knightley recalled to BBC Radio 1 in 2018. "This is the problem with being 17 and being in films! It was humongous, so there was no choice but to find a hat to cover it — because there was no lighting or makeup that was going to cover it."
3. Yep, Alan Rickman's character definitely had an affair
In December 2015, Love Actually scriptwriter Emma Freud answered fan questions on X (formerly Twitter), and it took our heartbreak to the next level. "DEFINITELY had an affair. I begged [director Curtis] just to make it a flirtation, but no. The whole way," Freud said of the relationship between Rickman and Thompson’s characters. As for their future, she also revealed, “They stay together, but home isn't as happy as it once was.”
4. Olivia Olson, who played the supremely-talented Joanna, was offered record deals after the movie
"It seemed kind of stupid and forced," Olson told the now-defunct blog Family That Geeks in 2016, per Self magazine. "Looking at the grand scheme of things, I could have been some child star and had a total breakdown by the age I am now, and I probably wouldn't have had the opportunities I have now. I might have been a has-been by now instead of still trying to build up my career. So, I don't regret it not working out that way."
5. Colin Firth's epic kiss was choreographed (Spoiler: It WILL make you swoon)
"In the restaurant in Portugal (was Marseille actually). I WAS THE KISSING CONSULTANT. And that is a real job," Freud revealed on X in 2015, explaining how it came together: "I 'designed' the kiss between Firth and the Portuguese girl. My signature move? His thumb on her lip before they snog. #boom.”
6. Director Richard Curtis intended to cast a mix of well-known and up-and-coming actors
And it worked — kind of. Many of the film’s unknown stars went on to find major success, like Jones on Mad Men, Ejiofor in 12 Years a Slave and Andrew Lincoln on The Walking Dead.
As for Knightley, Curtis told The Daily Beast in 2013: "With Keira, it was only her second film, and I remember talking to her while we were shooting and asking her what she was doing next, and she said, 'Oh, it's going to be terrible, and I've probably made a terrible mistake, but I'm doing this pirates movie, but it will at least be a few fun months in the sun.'"
That “pirates movie,” of course, was 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl — only the fourth highest-grossing movie of that year.
7. The iconic "To me, you are perfect" scene almost didn’t happen
(We know.) Speaking to Elle in November 2013, Curtis revealed that he workshopped five ideas and ran them by women in his office: "I told them, 'There's this guy, he's never told you he loved you. Which of these ideas are romantic, and which are off-putting?' [I had ideas like] filling the courtyard outside her house with roses, and they went 'yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck' for the first four. Then I had the idea of the Bob Dylan signs. … The scene was selected by group research."
8. Whose handwriting is on *those* signs?
"It is my handwriting!" Lincoln told Entertainment Weekly in November 2013. "It's funny, because the art department did it, and then I said, 'Well, can I do it?' because I like to think that my handwriting is really good. [Laughs] Actually, it ended up with me having to sort of trace over the art department's, so it is my handwriting, but with a sort of pencil stencil underneath."
9. People still quote Billy Mack at Bill Nighy
"My favorite line — the one they'll write on my tombstone and the one kids still shout at me, is: 'Hi, kids! Don't buy drugs — become a rock star, and they give you them for free,' " Nighy told The Guardian in December 2013.
10. Billy Bob Thornton faced an unexpected phobia on set
"Billy Bob Thornton is a curious man with curious phobias," Curtis told Elle in 2013. "[He told us] 'The strangest phobia I've got is I'm disturbed by photographs of Benjamin Disraeli. Specifically his facial hair.' It was really unfortunate for him that this would be the only time in his life that there is a photograph of Disraeli on the stairs in a major film he's going to do [at the Prime Minster's home]. We just had to walk him past the photograph. [He said] 'I'll just turn away at that moment, and I'll be fine.' "
11. The Spider-Man in the school Christmas pageant is Richard Curtis' son
His daughter is also in the play!
"There's a scene where they're up onstage performing the Nativity play, and he's got a Spider-Man mask on, and there's a big close-up of a very perplexed-looking 5-year-old," Curtis told The Daily Beast in 2013. "And my daughter is one of the lobsters."
12. Sam's race through the airport was even more epic than we thought
"In the original edit Sam did amazing [parkour] all through the airport when he ran to find his girlfriend," Freud revealed on X.
13. Laura Linney and Rodrigo Santoro both experienced relationship woes while filming
One of the saddest moments in the film is the open end to Sarah (Laura Linney) and Karl's (Rodrigo Santoro) plotline. Off-camera, however, the stars had something in common.
"We were both brokenhearted at the time and had gotten out of rough relationships, so it was just very sweet," Linney recalled to The Daily Beast in 2013.
14. Hugh Grant was not about that dancing scene
Curtis recalled as much during , ABC News' one-hour reunion special with Diane Sawyer celebrating the film’s 20th anniversary.
“He kept saying no,” he explained. “I think he was hoping I’d get ill or something and we’d say, ‘Oh, well, what a shame, we’ll have to lose that dancing sequence.’ ”
“I saw it in the script, and I thought, ‘Well, I’ll hate doing that,’ ” Grant added. “I didn’t fancy doing the dance at all, let alone rehearsing it. ... To this day, there’s many people — and I agree with them — who think it’s the most excruciating scene ever committed to celluloid. Then some people like it. But I will give myself this credit … it was my idea to have that secretary lady catch me. Genius.”
15. Andrew Lincoln joked that his character is kind of a stalker
The actor told The Wrap in February 2016: "That was my question to Richard Curtis, 'Do you not think we're sort of borderline stalker territory here?' And he said, 'No, no. Not with you playing it, darling. You'll be all right.' "
16. Keira Knightley's wedding dress was almost very different
"Richard Curtis wanted [Keira's] character to be kind of sexy, even as a bride," costume designer Joanna Johnston told Grazia in November 2016. "He wanted her to be dressed ready for the end of the scene where they're partying, so he had this idea of a crop top, with a bare tummy. … I told Richard, 'You don't want a bare tummy going into church!' So I went for a sheer, layered style instead with petal details underneath; gauzy and multi-layered."
17. January Jones helped out with her Wisconsin bar scene
"January Jones wrote half of her lines," Freud tweeted in 2015. "She was sooooo funny when we filmed that scene."
18. Juliet and Sam were eerily close in age in real life
A viral 2019 tweet pointed out that Knightley (who played a married woman) was 18 at the time of filming, while Brodie-Sangster (who played a young child) was 13, making them much closer than they appear in age to viewers.
"Yearly reminder that there is only a [five-year] age gap between Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Keira Knightley in Love Actually," the tweet read, featuring side-by-side photos of the two actors in the movie, though they did not share any scenes together.
19. Thomas Brodie-Sangster “had no idea” the film would become so popular
"I remember already having the part and going into the read-through and not knowing who else was in it," the Queen’s Gambit star told PEOPLE in October 2020. "I'd just go, 'Oh, it's another job. Great. I'm on another job.' And then all these faces started walking in through the door, and I realized that this is probably quite big."
"I felt a bit embarrassed, I asked [a runner], 'Is this coming out in the cinema?' And he's like, 'Yeah,' " Brodie-Sangster added. "I was like, 'Really? Oh, wow.' I had no idea what it was, and then they walked me through to the room, and I was sat down with maybe 50 very high-profile amazing actors all around this table. It was only then that I realized what I was a part of. All the way up until that point I had no idea whatsoever."
20. Richard Curtis regretted the film’s lack of diversity
Looking back on the movie for 2022’s The Laughter & Secrets of Love Actually: 20 Years Later anniversary special, Curtis admitted to feeling “uncomfortable and a bit stupid” about Love Actually’s “lack of diversity.”
“There are things you'd change but, thank God, society is changing, so my film is bound, in some moments, to feel out of date,” the director continued. “I think there are sort of three plots that have sort of bosses and people who work for them,” he added, speaking to the film’s story lines mostly involving white, heterosexual romances.
"There is such extraordinary love that goes on every minute in so many ways [in life], all the way around the world, and makes me wish my film was better," he said. "It makes me wish I'd made a documentary just to kind of observe it."
21. Bill Nighy wasn't aware he was auditioning for Love Actually
"I did a rehearsal reading of the script as a favor to the great casting director, Mary Selway, who had been trying to get me into a film for a long time," Nighy told The Daily Beast in 2013. "I thought it was simply to help her hear the script aloud and to my genuine surprise I was given the job."
22. Olivia Olson had her first real-life kiss in the movie
The up-and-coming actress had never been kissed before smooching costar Brodie-Sangster.
"It was my first kiss and on-screen kiss, too," Olson told E! News in 2016. "I was really nervous because I kind of had a crush on Thomas back in the day and I was also worried because I was taller than him."
23. The word "actually" is said more than 20 times throughout the movie
IMDb counted the word was used 22 times in Love Actually — well, 23 actually ... if you include the opening monologue.
