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Love Actually (2003) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more.
—. The characters are falling in love, falling out of love, some are with right people, some are with the wrong people, some are looking to have an affair, some are in the period of mourning; a capsule summary of reality. Love begins and love ends. They flirt a lot.
They are all flirting with love. At all ages and social levels, love is the theme. Romantic love and brotherly love is the hotchpotch through out the movie. Most of the movie is filmed in London, during Christmas and the characters all ended up at Heathrow airport a very uplifting note. —. Love is all around us, which that's certainly true for all of these people.
John and 'Just Judy' have fallen in love with each other while on the set of an erotically charged film. David has just become the new Prime Minister. The second he steps into his office/home, he is smitten with Natalie- his catering manager who had already screwed up at the first minute. David's sister is Karen, married to Harry, who runs a local magazine. Harry is somewhat smitten by his secretary, Mia, who is constantly hitting on him. Harry's best editor is Sarah, having mentally-ill brother and a not-so-hidden crush on Karl, who has a thing for her as well. Karen is friends with both Daniel, who had just lost his wife and has discovered that his stepson is in love with a young American girl, and Jamie, whose girlfriend has just left him for his younger and more attractive brother, forcing him to move to France to continue writing his novel while falling for Aurelia, a young Portuguese woman who can't speak a lick of English.
Juliet has just married Peter, not realizing that his best friend Mark has loved her since they first met. Colin is desperate to have sex and believes that in order to do that, he should travel to Wisconsin because he thinks that American women will dig him for being British. And Billy Mack, an old rocker who is climbing back up the charts after battling his old heroin addiction, is on the radio and TV shows either bad-mouthing his new CD, insulting his manager, Joe, or a hot new boy band, or calling Britney Spears a 'bad shag'. Are you still following along?
—. Set almost entirely in London, England during five frantic weeks before Christmas follows a web-like pattern of inter-related, loosely related and unrelated stories of a dozen or more various individuals with their love lives, or lack of them. The central character is the new bachelor prime minister David who cannot express his growing feelings for his new personal assistant Natalie. The prime minister's older sister Karen slowly grows aware of her husband Harry's flirtation with an office worker named Mia. Karen's friend Daniel is a recently widowed writer whose 11-year-old son asks for love advice about a girl he has a crush on. Meanwhile, Jamie is another writer who leaves his girlfriend after catching her cheating on him and travels to France to write a novel where he pursues a possible romance with his non-English speaking Portuguese maid Aurelia.
Also, Harry's American secretary Sarah questions a romance she pursues with the office hunk Karl, but her personal family problems get in the way. Other secondary characters involve a photographer who pursues his best friend's new wife Juliet; a pair of movie stand-ins, named John and Judy, who grow closer after their simulated love scenes; a libidinous chum who wants to travel to Wisconsin, USA to score with women; and a burned-out former rock star named Billy Mack who is the main connection between all stories involved.
Rating: If you want to be cynical, you can take the measure of this ensemble film by its weakest elements. The sappy opening narration, insufferable child actor Thomas Sangster and the overlong running gag about a pair of movie stand-ins going through the increasingly naked and explicit motions of blocking a very steamy sex scene while making shy, getting-to-know you small talk come to mind. But why be churlish when so many fine actors are committing their considerable talents to a generally sharply crafted series of interconnected stories that illustrate love in all its forms — rapturous, unrequited, selfish, fledgling, duplicitous, foolish and imperiled — and sets them all awhirl in the weeks before Christmas? The newly elected prime minister (Hugh Grant) falls inconveniently in love with Natalie (Martine McCutcheon), a common and slightly plump girl at the bottom rung of 10 Downing Street's household staff. Blissful newlyweds Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Juliet (Keira Knightley) can't figure out why Peter's best friend, artist Mark (Andrew Lincoln), treats Juliet like sour milk. Cuckolded during Peter and Juliet's wedding, mystery novelist Jamie (Colin Firth) falls for the Portuguese cleaning lady (Lucia Moniz) at his French retreat, even though they don't share one word of a common language.
Mark's friend Mia (Heike Makatsch) is hell-bent on seducing her boss, Harry (Alan Rickman), and sees the company Christmas party — which she arranges at Mark's gallery — as the perfect opportunity. Harry's wife, Karen (Emma Thompson), the PM's sister, suspects her marriage is cooling but doesn't know why. Harry encourages employee Sarah (Laura Linney), who's been nursing a not-so-secret crush on handsome officemate Karl (Rodrigo Santoro), to make a move, but she puts self-abnegating responsibility to her demanding, mentally ill brother first. Newly widowed Daniel (Liam Neeson), Karen's best friend, tries to help his 11-year-old stepson, Sam (Thomas Sangster), navigate the choppy waters of puppy love. And the background to all their entanglements is forgotten '70s pop star Billy Mack's (Bill Nighy) comeback bid, which involves reworking a treacly love song into an even sappier Christmas song and conducting his obligatory promotional campaign with rudely refreshing irreverence. But FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL screenwriter Richard Curtis's directing debut is frequently funny, generally fizzy and occasionally piercingly perceptive about the price love exacts. And it gives underrated character actor Nighy the role of a lifetime in the fatuous, self-centered and secretly sentimental Mack, which alone is reason to celebrate.