Love Actually almost didn't make it to the big screen it was such a disaster. He spent years dating women who were too quiet. He accidentally picked the same house to film in for both Love Actually and About Time (but can you guess where it was?).
These are just some of the most fascinating and ever-so-slightly surprising revelations rom-com king Richard Curtis tells The Standard in a very special charity episode of our new dating podcast, London Love Stories, in honour of our Winter Survival Appeal with Comic Relief.
The eight-part podcast series follows Londoners and their real-life love stories, from couples that met on the Tube to fateful 999 calls, but Curtis’ love story is a little different to the others featured in the series so far.
His particular episode is not about his love story with his wife, nor with his various ex-girlfriends — though both certainly feature — but with London; the city that has provided a backdrop for the last 40 years of his life and for so many of his films, from Four Weddings and a Funeral to his latest Christmas movie, Genie, and the city he believes is one of the most loving in the world, not just in terms of Londoners’ propensity for romance, but their propensity to show love to each other, too.
From his favourite London filming locations to the real reason he sets so many of his movies at Christmas, here are some of his most bombshell quotes.
...on London being a giant film set
To some extent London is just a very big film set. When I pass those ponds where Hugh Grant and Colin Firth had a fight, I think ‘there’s Hugh and Colin’ and when I go to Trafalgar Square I remember a very windy night on top of the National Gallery, trying to get a beautiful shot of the enormous Christmas tree heading downtowards Downing Street.
And Greenwich where we shot the second wedding in Four Weddings and my blue door in Notting Hill. To some extent, London is just one big, extraordinarily beautiful film set which has managed to drag me through my career.
...on Christmas being a deadline
The thing I love about Christmas is it’s a deadline. That’s why Love Actually is set at Christmas; I was trying to think of a time where if there were 10 people in similarsituations they’d have to sort out by December 25.
I always used to think I could seal the deal before Christmas. And I do think I bought quite a lot of red coats, like the one Martine wears in Love Actually, in the hope that it would change some girl’s mind – but it never did. Well, once. I think I bought one for Emma [Freud, his wife], and things have turned out ok on that front… I think she’s got three!
...on what he'd change about Love Actually
We were meant to have an LGBTQ story [in Love Actually] but it got cut and I feel as though I let myself down there. And the diversity issue is very different now.
It would’ve been lovely to make the film more culturally rich. To have had Hanukkah, to have had Diwali in there. So I do think if I did it again it would have a broader spread to it.
...on how Love Actually almost didn't make it to the big screen
I don’t think I’ll do another one because Love Actually was one of my films that was closest to a disaster. Two months before it came out, it was an absolute mess.
I originally wrote the film like ABCDEFG, with one bit of each story one after the other. When you watched the film it was as though I didn’t actually care about any of the stories. The moment you did an extra bit you then lost interest. So what we had to do was ABCCC, A again, DDF. It was like playing three-dimensional chess. Any scene could go after any other scene.
The final film is like I threw up the original script and put it back together in a completely different order. So I feel as though I’ve got lucky once, I don’t want to risk it again.
...on accidentally choosing the same filming house twice
I remember we were trying to find the perfect house for Rachel McAdams to live in with Domhnall Gleeson in About Time. We looked and looked and eventually found this lovely house on the Golbourne Road.
On the night we were filming there, Emma Thompson turned up and said 'Oh wow, same house'. I said: 'Sorry, what are you talking about?'. It turned out it was literally the same location where the character of Colin lived in Love Actually. So that’s got to be my favourite location because I picked it twice without even knowing!
...on houses that go all-out with Christmas decorations
I love that insane thing where you have a street of 20 houses and one of them goes the full Christmas. I’d love to meet the people that do that. When did they start planning? How much did they spend on the decorations and their electricity bills?
I’d love to meet the people who have those houses with 14 Santas outside. I’d love to get to the bottom of the psychology of those people.
...on entertaining Tube announcements
I love the variation of the voices of the people who make all those announcements on the Tube. I always love that: when you get a characterful person who’s actually being friendly to you when advising you not to dive down onto the tracks.
My favourite thing these days is that announcement on the Tube which says 'if you see anything which doesn’t look right please report it'. I’m always wondering whether I should report when someone’s jumper clashes badly with the colour of their coat, because it doesn’t look right.
I wonder whether, if you report it to say that hat doesn’t go with that tie, whether someone will take that person aside and say ‘I’m sorry sir but that really doesn’t look right and I think you’re going to have to take off either the scarf or the hat because they don’t go together at all’.
...on a recent encounter with a Big Issue seller
I’ve just moved house and there’s this guy who’s selling the Big Issue at the end of one of our streets. I’ve passed him a few times over the last few weeks and given him a bit of cash, and the last time I passed him he said: 'Will you be back tomorrow?' And I said: 'Probably' because I walk to the Tube station every day.
I went and passed him the next day and he reached into his bag, went through all sorts of things and took out a huge pot of honey. And he said: 'This is honey from my hometown'. I think he came from Romania. He gave me back a gift in gratitude for the little bits of money that I’d been giving him. I love that feeling.
It reminded me of a time when I first went to Ethiopia with Comic Relief. I remember a wonderful piece-to-camera where someone said: Thank you very much for the help that you’re giving – and if ever you in England are in trouble you must get back in touch with us and see if we can ever help in any way'.
It was a reminder that you should always try to imagine the lives of the people you’re giving money to and the fact that they were someone’s dad, someone’s uncle, someone’s kid at some point. It’s worth remembering the humanity of everyone.
...on his love of London
One of the best things about London is it’s cosy. I’m completely obsessed with that thing of looking in other people’s windows at night. I’m not accusing myself of a crime here, I’m just saying that it’s always cold outside and you look in and you can see a fire and you can see a Christmas tree and the lights.
When we shot Love Actually we went round and shot all the lights, and I must say the lights are getting better and better with every passing year. People have clearly found out that being noisy and bright and colourful pulls in the customers, so I think London’s becoming more radiant and luminescent with every passing year now. I particularly love the variety and the diversity of people in London these days. I still feel in Paris everybody’s French and everybody’s... mean. But in London there’s all kinds of people, from your original Cockney to your police posho. Today we’ve got such a rich blend of cultures and colours and particularly food. I feel as though when I come to London I’m just experiencing the world rather than just bumping into Miss Marple.
I’ve been here for so long that in some ways London is just a huge chunk of my mind. I’ve always thought that if I ever wrote an autobiography I’d just put a map of London on the front page with lots and lots of red numbers by it and describe the 100 most interesting things that have happened here during my endless life here.
In some ways what’s surprising to me now the years have gone by is how much London has not changed. I remember when we first moved to the Portobello Road everyone said 'Oh, it’s all just going to become completely commercial, you won’t be able to recognise it, it’ll just be full of Five Guys and McDonalds' – and actually the Portobello Road still absolutely smacks of what the Portobello Road always smacked of, which is all the market places and the curious stores selling incense and vegetarian food. I’ve been delighted by how slowly it’s changed, actually.
...on London being the most romantic city in the world
I do think London is full of romance, too. Dickens is just such a powerful figure in all our imaginations, so it’s historically romantic. You so often just turn a corner and there’s a cobbled street and a wooden-ish Shakespearian houses. So I find it historically romantic. And then almost every time I’ve fallen in love and wandered by the side of the river [in despair] it’s been in London by the Thames. So it’s certainly been the context for an enormous amount of romantic stuff for me.
I do think that the river is tremendously romantic, whether you’re strolling by it or crossing its bridges. I don’t know if you remember but in Four Weddings and a Funeral, Hugh chases after Andy McDowell on the Embankment. In Love Actually, Liam Neeson sits next to Thomas Brodie-Sangster on the bench with those astonishing buildings behind.
A lot of London's romance has to do with the river and a lot of it has to do with nighttime. If ever you’re shooting a scene and people are sorting their lives out, it’s night and London’s looking very pretty. I think about Keira Knightley running after Andrew Lincoln after he’s shown her those cards: it’s that thing of it being pitch dark, of there being Christmas lights everywhere... So I’m going to say London's romance has got a lot to do with darkness and water and lights.
...on his own awkward dating encounters
I remember an extraordinary thing. It was at Christmas and I bumped into some girl I’d had a tremendous crush on, years ago, she’s married now. I said 'Let me buy you a present for old times’ sake'. And she said 'That’s a lovely idea'. She took me to Ralph Lauren! I mean, I meant some wine gums.
I just looked at horror of the price tags she was trying on. Thankfully she was so stylish that none of them actually came up to her standard and I think I did end up buying her a packet of wine gums. That was one of my scary London romantic moments.
...on friendship
If you look at the curve of my movies, they’re always thought of as romantic comedies but a lot of them are as much about friendship as they are about romantic love, and increasingly, recently, as much about family as they are about romance. Those are the three big loves: family, romance and friends.
Notting Hill the movie was inspired by the fact that I used to have dinner every Tuesday with the same set of friends, and it was always exactly us. I had this dream when I was driving to Clapham one day: what would happen if I turned up with Madonna? How would they react? And I knew how they’d react: one of them would be absolutely nuts as she was an absolutely obsessive Madonna fan. And my two hosts would never have heard of her, so they wouldn’t recognise her.
So it’s about London and friendship. You need friends less when you’re in love but more when you’re not so it’s almost like the mirror image of romantic love is having your friends there to pick up the slack when things go wrong.
...on the dating advice he wishes someone had given him
Often when we’re dealing with everything except love, we make intelligent, coherent decisions. You say 'I don’t like going to this place, so I won’t go to that place again. I don’t like that kind of food so I won’t eat octopus'.
But often in our love lives we allow ourselves to stumble into the same mistakes. And I think [the advice I wish I'd had is] just sitting back, and thinking: 'Are there qualities that I really want from the person that I might fall in love with?' and to look for that.
I remember in particular, when I was about 30, I suddenly realised that the thing I most wanted from somebody I love was for them to be talkative. I realised I’d been out with a few quite quiet people and I was always filling in the gaps. So you’d get into a car and say 'How was your week?' and they’d say 'Fine' and I’d think 'Oh my God, we’ve got 59 more minutes to talk about it'.
So my advice, when you’re looking for love, is see whether or not you can actually spot what you want: I someone who’s tall, I want someone who’s quiet, I want someone who’s chatty, I want someone who’s generous…
I think maybe just try and limit the field of your search a little bit, might be a helpful bit of advice. Look at yourself a bit from the outside and say: 'What does thisperson need?' Rather than: 'What do I need?'.
...on what love means to him
What love means to me is the sound of the early Beatles songs. In Love Actually there’s a line where Emma Thomson says she learnt everything about life from Joni Mitchell. For me, it’s the sound of early Beatles songs which taught me you can be happy, you can be in love, you can be exuberant, all those kinds of things.
In a funny way, love to me is the thing that feels a bit like the Beatles.
...on the state of love and romance in 2023
I’m a great believer that love actually is all around and I never stop thinking that for all the terrible things going on in our world, somewhere in London half a million people are falling in love.
