Richard Curtis: Love Actually a 'catastrophe'

Richard Curtis has described editing hit festive romcom Love Actually as a “catastrophe” which he desperately wanted more time to work into shape. Speaking at the Cheltenham literature festival over the weekend, the film-maker said the 2003 film had to be finished in time for a Christmas release, much to his chagrin.

“The only nightmare scenario that I’ve been caught in was Love Actually, which worked at the read-through, and when we finished the film and I watched it edited it was … a catastrophe,” said Curtis in comments first reported by the Radio Times. “Because there were 12 stories, [finding the right order] was like three-dimensional chess … And that was enormously difficult to finish or get right.”

Curtis suggested the film, which features an ensemble cast including Hugh Grant, Martine McCutcheon, Bill Nighy, Emma Thompson, Rowan Atkinson and Martin Freeman, was not entirely to his liking when it finally hit the big screen. “You could have played with it for all time – but it had to be out by Christmas,” he said.

The British film-maker, who said last year that sci-fi romance About Time would most likely be his final movie as a director, also revealed he completely rewrote 1999’s Notting Hill after an early read-through hinted at problems ahead. “There are lots of processes of judgment by the reality of how people react to it,” he said.

Peter Bradshaw’s Love Actually review