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Half of the titanic writing team that produced one of television?s finest comedies - Blackadder - in his directorial debut.

Love Actually, directed by Richard Curtis

Celebrated screenwriter, Richard Curtis (Four Weddings And A Funeral, Blackadder, Bridget Jones?s Diary, Notting Hill) has crafted a romantic comedy screenplay that ignites laughter, wreaks havoc, breaks hearts, forces choices, catapulting spirits and celebrates that most illogical of emotions: love. It?s all round us, actually...

Love Actually is a new romantic comedy set firmly in the tradition of Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones?s Diary. With the action all taking place in a rather too cute, rather too neat version of contemporary London (but this is the movies ? and a romantic comedy after all) in the run-up to Christmas. It tells one story which weaves together a spectacular number of love affairs - sometimes romantic, sometimes sad, sometimes stupid - all funny in their own way.

Everywhere you look in this film, love is causing chaos. From the new, bachelor Prime Minister (played by Brit fop for hire Hugh Grant) who falls in love thirty seconds after taking his place in Downing Street, to a loser sandwich delivery guy who doesn?t have a hope with the girls. From a jilted writer who escapes to the south of France in the hopes of nursing his broken heart, to an ageing rock star trying to make a comeback at any price; from a bride having problems with her husband?s best man, to a married woman having trouble with her husband.

From a schoolboy with a crush on the prettiest girl in the school, to his architect step-father with a crush on the unattainable Claudia Schiffer. Their London lives and loves collide, mingle and climax on Christmas Eve (making this a double whammy ? a festive feel good romantic comedy just tailor made for future Boxing Day afternoon TV screenings). Again and again and again the cast of lovelorn characters collide, with romantic, poignant and funny consequences for all.

The film features a remarkable stellar ensemble cast including: Alan Rickman, Andrew Lincoln, Bill Nighy, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Colin Firth, Emma Thompson, Gregor Fisher, Heike Makatsch, Hugh Grant, Joanna Page, Keira Knightley (Pirates Of The Caribbean) Kris Marshall, Laura Linney, Liam Neeson, Martin Freeman, former Eastender and West End stage Eliza Doolittle Martine McCutcheon, Thomas Sangster and former Blackadder and Mr Bean star Rowan Atkinson.

It is a lucky thing for comedy lovers everywhere that Richard Curtis did not turn out to be a better actor. The screenwriter of these hit television comedy series - and feature films Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill had cooled on his initial career choice of journalism by the time he reached Oxford University and instead decided to pursue acting.

It was then that Curtis began to pen the comedy sketches in which he would perform because, as he remembers, ?It turned out I was totally bland and had no talent, and the only way of getting onstage was to write the things I would act.?

While regularly turning out his sketch comedy, he met up with another actor, Rowan Atkinson, for whom Curtis also began to write. The partnership lasted through Oxford and then continued out in the 'real world' of show business, with the two collaborating on projects for Atkinson and others to perform.

Not the Nine O?Clock News

The pair was instrumental in the creation of the BBC?s Not the Nine O?Clock News (Curtis? first job writing for television); the popular topical sketch comedy show ran for four series. With no more lofty goals than ?just wanting to write a good sitcom,? Curtis and Atkinson then created Blackadder, the internationally popular and award-winning series for the BBC, which also ran for four series, each set in a different century. It was about this time that Curtis, the successful television comedy writer, began to take his career, ?even mildly seriously. Then I decided to write a film like some of the films that I love - small intimate little movies with love in them.?

Curtis? first feature film outing was The Tall Guy, a comedy about an American actor trying to make a go at a career in British theatre after playing second banana to a successful comedian (played by Atkinson). It also featured the film debut of an English actress named Emma Thompson and was produced by Tim Bevan.

?Richard is wonderful at creating those moments where embarrassment and joy collide. He brings everything he learned during years of sketch and television comedy writing to his film work - it?s a deft and fine touch, combining humour and pathos without either one ever taking centre stage for too long,? observes Bevan.

The writer himself adds, ?I do seem to have written a great deal about love. But I mean if you look at the world, there are huge amounts of love and affection, and yet so much of art portrays the darker side of humanity. When I look around the world I notice a lot of things that are rather gorgeous, lots of people with kind hearts.?

Following more collaborative work between Curtis and Atkinson (including such projects as a holiday telefilm about a boy and a genie and the worldwide television phenomenon of Bean), Curtis wrote another small intimate movie with love in it, about a group of friends, acquaintances and lovers meeting and re-meeting at a series of social ceremonies. He sent a copy of the screenplay to producer Duncan Kenworthy.

Kenworthy recalls, ?Richard gave me a copy of Four Weddings and a Funeral and I read it and told him it was the best thing he?d ever written. I also told him I couldn?t produce it because, at the time, I was on staff at the Henson Company, but that I?d really love to help him work on it.?

As the project evolved, Kenworthy took a leave from the company in order to produce the movie and joined Working Title co-chairmen Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner, who served as executive producers. The brilliantly successful film went on to earn more than $250 million worldwide and Oscar nominations for ?Best Film? and ?Best Original Screenplay?.

Four Weddings'

Fellner says, ?It sounds like such a clich?, to say that something is a ?feel-good? film. But that?s what we had with Four Weddings and a Funeral. We started out being perceived as this little British film, but the response to it just kept building and expanding. In the end, it became this enormous hit that sort of revived the fashion of the ?feel-good? romantic comedy.?

After Four Weddings', ?a Richard Curtis comedy? was planted even more firmly into the lexicon of movie business jargon. Kenworthy explains, ?I think the hardest thing to achieve in a comedy is something that Richard seems to manage effortlessly?to make you laugh and care at the same time. He?s not really into ridicule. It?s this quality that often blinds people to the rudeness of his jokes, and vice versa. The first seven words of Four Weddings' were not ?Oh, no, I?m late for the wedding.? The level of profanity was pretty radical for a romantic comedy in 1994, but it was still a movie that people didn?t mind watching with their grandmothers.?

It was while the group was working on another film (Richard writing, Duncan producing and Tim, Eric and Richard executive producing) about love and fame?Notting Hill?that the idea for Love Actually began to emerge. Kenworthy remembers, ?Richard usually gets the idea for his next film while he?s hanging around the set of his last one, so it was when we were working on Notting Hill that he was dreaming up Love Actually. He said he?d had an idea for something that would touch on lots of people?s lives. Richard had promised himself and the family that they would do something very special in the year 2000, and he and Emma and the kids went off to Bali for six months.

Something ?special? for Richard was not working. And during his walks along the beach in Bali to exercise his damaged back, he was dreaming up ideas for this film.?

Richard says, ?Love Actually is meant to be a real spoiling experience. I tried to work out the extra bits of plot and get straight from ?A? to ?F.? It?s like watching the edited highlights of several stories, yet put together, they all combine to an overall story - even though there are a lot of different ingredients, they form one cogent taste.?

Curtis? story on the genesis of the project is less clear, but echoes Kenworthy?s take. He remarks with a smile, ?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.?

Working Title

Tim Bevan observes, ?Working Title has succeeded on the strength of the relationships we have built, and we?re proud of that. For us to have begun very early on with Richard and continued with him up to this point?I can?t imagine a more satisfactory arrangement. The arrival of Love Actually was just a natural evolution, not only for Richard, but for us as well.?

Somewhere before/during/after the script for Love Actually began to emerge, the idea of Curtis directing the project also surfaced. ?I said to Richard, at one point during Notting Hill,? says Kenworthy, ??You know, it?s either going to have to be you or me directing the next one.? I?m never surprised when a writer wants to direct his own work. It?s a genuinely difficult thing for a writer to hand over his work to a director to interpret. That?s why as a producer, I think of myself as the guardian of the script, making sure that everyone working on a film is working on the same film with the same interpretation of the script?because, generally speaking, the writer isn?t there.?

Except on a Curtis film...

Richard explains, ?I?ve been an unusual writer in that I?ve been allowed to be on the set every minute of every day of every film that I?ve ever done.? In addition to being a constant presence on the sets and in the editing rooms of his films, Curtis had also been, since 1987, co-producing the BBC?s live fundraising Comic Relief telecasts - all invaluable experience for the filmmaker about to launch into his directorial debut.

Comic Relief

Kenworthy observes, ?Richard?s always had the skills. Comic Relief is a fantastic training ground for working with actors. And he thinks in the round about everything?if the crew ask questions about whether a character wears glasses, where he would live, or what sort of pictures he would have on his wall, he?s always had those answers to hand.? Curtis jokingly adds, ?I think other directors were finding me hard to work with and I decided if anyone was going to suffer with me as an interfering writer, it might as well be me.?

All forces in filmmaking in their own right, the re-combination of Curtis, Kenworthy and Working Title?s Bevan and Fellner made for a dream situation when it came time to filling the roles of the seemingly multitudinous cast - the combined rolodexes alone could provide endless possibilities for casting choices.

Though several of the faces in Love Actually are long-time collaborators (including Grant, Thompson and others), many are new additions to the Curtis/Kenworthy/Working Title troupe. Kenworthy admits that while Curtis had specific actors in mind when penning selected parts, everyone was required to audition for the filmmakers.

?Richard definitely had certain actors in mind for certain roles this time, which had never happened before, not even on Notting Hill, but he still wanted to cast and cast and cast. One of the things we both learned from Mike Newell during Four Weddings is that you see everybody and you keep on looking and testing and casting up until the last minute, until you?ve got the perfect mix. That was all the more necessary with the balance of such a large cast in Love Actually,? tells Kenworthy.

The director/screenwriter offers, ?Love Actually was a huge amount of fun to cast, because normally there aren?t enough roles to cast?if I have this actor then I can?t have that actor, that sort of thing. But in this film there are around 20 leading roles and everybody has a really substantial story to tell. So the casting process was a delight.?

Goofy

Not content to limit his ingredients, the screenwriter/director includes several other different pictures of the variations on human love into his on-screen recipe: Colin, a goofy young sandwich vendor?s (Kris Marshall) search for the woman of his dreams, who he believes most definitely lives in America, most probably Milwaukee; the relationship that begins between a couple of movie stand-ins (played by Martin Freeman and Joanna Page) who hesitate to reveal their sweet and growing emotions despite the fact that they are totally naked while they?re working; and a mysterious figure (Rowan Atkinson), with a penchant for inserting himself into the lives of those around him.

A frustrated assistant director (Abdul Salis) trying vainly to be the voice of reason to his over-optimistic best friend; an American President (Billy Bob Thornton) who has a way of taking what he wants; a smoky voiced secretary (Heike Makatsch) who has no problem going for what she wants; and a ten-year-old Christmas pageant star (Olivia Olson) with the voice of an angel - these are just a few of the additional characters who play their parts in the panoramic world created by Curtis.

The filmmakers gathered Working Title alums - all top-notch talents - and a few fresh faces to work behind camera, including production designer Jim Clay, editor Nick Moore, costumer Joanna Johnston and composer Craig Armstrong.

London Nights

Curtis set Love Actually in the city he has called home (off and on) for the last two decades, London, but also includes jaunts to Marseille (the airport, a restaurant, Aurelia?s house) and a villa in Vidauban, France (Jamie?s retreat) - a change for the writer/director (and a setting which underlines the difficulties facing the very British Jamie in such a very foreign place).

?Throughout my career, I?ve been proud of the fact that I?ve never had a day of filming outside of London?I?d never taken any of my characters outside of the city and I thought I?d been very wise about that. But then after one of week of filming in Marseille, with gorgeous surroundings and lovely dinners, I realized that I had made a terrible, terrible mistake,? tosses Curtis. ?Now, I?m never going to set anything closer to London than Morocco.?

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 chapel, 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 Airport.

He remembers, ?We were shooting a film in Los Angeles and I had to stand at the airport for about an hour waiting for a package. It was an extraordinary sight to see?these really ordinary faces of people looking bored while they waited suddenly exploding with all of this love and affection. You could see the complexity of their relationships right there in their faces, and that?s the kind of truth I?m trying to show.?

By book ending the film this way, Kenworthy hopes moviegoers who have looked into the lives of the characters are brought back into the context of the real world, reminded that ?everyone in a crowd has a special story, a real story, a love story.?

Curtis closes, ?I?m very haunted by what constitutes being ?realistic? - if I had to say, to me The Sound of Music seems to be quite a realistic piece of work. That film, which is accused of being totally saccharine, says two things: that good people hated the Nazis, which they did; and that lots of people fall in love and love their children, which they do. So there seems to me to be more truth to that than something that?s called a searingly realistic drama, because all over the world, every minute of every day, people are falling in love. I say that no matter how dark the world gets, the actual texture of life has a lot to do with love.?

General opinion?s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred
and greed ? but I don?t see that ? seems to me that love is everywhere.

Often it?s not particularly dignified or newsworthy ? but it?s always there ? fathers & sons, mothers & daughters, husbands & wives, friends & strangers.

If you look for it, I?ve got a sneaking suspicion that love actually is all around...

Love Actually is out now on DVD.

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