The Writer & The Housekeeper
Curtis' character of Jamie (brought to life by Colin Firth) also draws on its author's life, as Jamie is a writer.  His story addresses the rejuvenative powers of love, as Jamie falls out of love with his unfaithful girlfriend and sequesters himself in the south of France, where he hopes to write a novel and mend his heart.  A young Portuguese girl, Aurelia (played by native singing star Lucia Moniz), is hired to clean the villa and the two tentatively begin to get to know each other--despite the fact that Aurelia speaks no English and Jamie constantly embarrasses himself in a variety of languages, none of them Portuguese.

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."

The Dreamer & The Dreamboat
Actress Laura Linney had come to Curtis' attention in several projects, notably in her performance in You Can Count on Me, and he was enthusiastic to cast her as Sarah, an office worker with a not-so-secret crush on a colleague (Rodrigo Santoro).

Curtis says, "I kept saying, as we were auditioning, 'We need someone like Laura Linney in this part,' till our casting director just cracked and said, 'Why don't we ask Laura Linney, then?'  She was just so perfect in that role.  She seemed to me to be a very radiant and wonderful person, who fills those around her with a sense of goodness and rightness.  It was the right quality for Sarah, who is in love with a guy in her office but has a family situation that makes it impossible for her to ever genuinely commit."

Linney found an easy connection to Sarah and her emotional truth and explains, "I think that love can be a choice and that love can be unexpected…it can be hoped for and it can be unselfish.  I think the thing that I take the most comfort in is that love has a power of its own and that it can come into your life when it's least expected or most needed and transform things in ways that you never thought possible.  You always know that it's out there--when you realise that you actually have it, it's just a comforting fact."

The Husband, The Wife & The Other Woman
One of the couples at the center of Love Actually--Karen and Harry, a married couple with two children--have grown overly comfortable with their love for each other.  In drawing their story, Curtis wanted to investigate "the whole idea of what happens when domesticity is interfered with."  The director sought two actors for whom the task of playing a long-term couple would be second nature and cast Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman (who had previously worked together in several projects, including Sense and Sensibility and The Winter Guest) in the roles. 

Rickman says, "It's good to work with people that you've worked with before, when you know, like and trust them.  Emma Thompson's playing my wife, in a sense, meant that we almost didn't have to rehearse the relationship--not that we're married, but we do know each other well and we've worked together a few times now."

In explaining his and Thompson's on-screen counterparts, Rickman says, "Karen and Harry both have very busy lives and that often leads to little chinks in the armor…and into one of those chinks steps a young woman called Mia who works in Harry's office.  It's just like a moment in time--you turn your head one way and one thing happens, turn another way and something else happens--but like perhaps a lot of men he had a weak moment, weak enough to give in."

Thompson relishes her reuniting with so many of her colleagues and observes, "Richard's a master at this kind of light material that also has a wealth of hidden depth.  The stories are cross sections of different lives that all line up, either thematically or tangentially.  It was fabulous to team up with Richard and Hugh and Alan and everyone again."

The Rock Star & The Manager
Versatile and well-respected stage and screen actor Bill Nighy was cast to play veteran rock musician Billy Mack--a little the worse for wear but still rallying for a post-burnout comeback.  Billy and his longtime (and long-suffering) manager, Joe (Gregor Fisher), have maneuvered the rocky road of Billy's career together and Joe is steering his client's attempt to end up on the record charts with a Christmas-themed re-tooling of a previous hit entitled "Christmas Is All Around" (actually Wet Wet Wet's "Love Is All Around," which was featured in Four Weddings and a Funeral).

Like his fellow actors, Nighy admits to not only being a fan of Curtis but also to being a committed romantic and confesses, "I'm disabled by romanticism, and I think most people are, aren't they?  I think you have to be in some kind of trouble not to be, really."

Billy's story also differs from the usual M.O.R. love story in that it shows another guise of love, platonic and non-romantic.  Curtis explains, "Something occurred to be when me were writing Blackadder, which was just the idea that if you work with somebody, you can--without knowing it--end up having spent your life with somebody that you never intended spending your life with.  I just wanted to look at that curiosity of professional relationships, that you spend more time with your co-worker than you do with your wife."

One of the most charming aspects of Billy is his absence of pretense (often present in those that have truly "been there, done that"), which Curtis drew from "seeing John McEnroe being interviewed or Bob Geldof talking about politics--they would say something and you would think, 'Oh my god, so that's the truth,' suddenly not coated with the varnish of convenience.  Billy has no interest in actually selling his records, he just wants to have a good time."

The Best Man & The Happy Couple
Combining both the themes of truth and the balance of domesticity is the triangle Curtis creates with newlyweds Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Juliet and Peter's best friend (and best man), Mark.  Mark (Andrew Lincoln) has become so adept at denying his true feelings for his best friend's girl (Keira Knightley) that she and her new husband both believe that Mark dislikes Juliet.  Curtis exploits his pointillistic approach and boils down the entire arc of the story to just a few scenes--an entire sweet, funny, touching relationship in short bursts that speak volumes.

Knightley enjoyed honing a character in such an economical way and says, "It is so beautifully written, Richard's really excelled himself on this one.  It's a challenge to tell the entire story in a few scenes--I've never really come across something like this before.  And it's been a pleasure to play."

The Sad-Act, The Movie Stand-Ins & The Others
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.

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 bookending 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."