Love Actually Director Admits Film's Weight Jokes Are No 'Longer Funny': 'I Was Behind the Curve'

“I don’t feel like I was malicious at the time, but I think I was careless and I wasn’t as smart as I should have been,” Richard Curtis said.

Richard Curtis reflects on body size comments in the Actually love.

As the 2003 British holiday classic approaches its 20th anniversary, the film’s writer-director, 66, addresses comments about the bodies of the female protagonists in the film and others he has written, including Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001).

IN Actually loveNatalie (Martine McCutcheon) — who plays Prime Minister Hugh Grant’s lover David — has multiple characters refer to her weight, including her father calling her “chubby,” a colleague who says she has “huge thighs” and even Grant’s character joking: ” God, you’re so heavy” after jumping into his arms at the airport.

“I remember how shocked I was five years ago when Scarlett told me, ‘You must never use the word ‘fat’ again,'” Curtis recently told The Times and Sunday Times Cheltenham during a conversation with his daughter, writer and activist Scarlett Curtis. Literature Festival, trans Today.

“And wow, you were right,” Scarlett, 28, said bluntly. and I wasn’t as smart as I should have been.”

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Enter Hugh Grant and Martine McCutcheon Actually love (2003).

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The stars of ‘Love Actually’, then and now

Actually love follows several stories and stars, in addition to Grant and McCutcheon, a cast consisting of Emma Thompson, Laura Linney, Bill Nighy, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Olivia Olson, Alan Rickman, Andrew Lincoln, Keira Knightley, Colin Firth, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Rodrigo Santoro, Lúcia Moniz, Martin Freeman, Kris Marshall, Joanna Page, Heike Makatsch, Abdul Salis, Gregor Fisher and Liam Neeson.

Enter Andrew Lincoln and Keira Knightley Actually love (2003).

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In conversation with Diane Sawyer for an ABC News special Laughter and secret love actually: 20 years later back in November 2022, Curtis said he felt “embarrassed and kind of stupid” about the film’s “lack of diversity” almost 20 years later.

“There are things you would change, but, thank God, society is changing, so my film will feel outdated at some points,” he said.

And while Curtis regretted not having more variety in the film, he said in the DVD bonus footage that he was “really sorry to lose” one story that was filmed but didn’t make it into the final cut. It followed a school principal, played by Anne Reid, who was in a lesbian relationship with a terminally ill woman, played by Frances de la Tour.

“The idea was that you just happened to meet this very strict headmistress… [but] later in the movie, [we] suddenly fell into with [her] and realize that no matter how unlikely it seems, every character you come across in life has their own complicated love story,” he said.

Another short scene that was cut was filmed in Kenya and involved a man and woman living in Africa “who faced starvation and came out of the ordeal together and united,” Grazia reported in 2020.

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Source: HIS Education