Love Actually director Richard Curtis says ‘lack of diversity makes me feel stupid’

Richard Curtis, director of Love Actually, has said the lack of diversity in the popular Christmas film makes him feel “stupid”.

The film, filled to the brim with festive heteronormativity and starring Hugh Grant, Keira Knightley, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Laura Linney and Bill Nighy, was first released in 2003.

But Curtis, who also directed Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, said during a new ABC one-hour special titled The Laughter & Secrets of Love Actually: 20 Years Later that there are many parts of the movie he now feels are severely outdated.

He said: “There are things that you would change, but thank God society is changing.

“My film is bound in some moments to feel out of date. The lack of diversity makes me feel uncomfortable and a bit stupid.”

He added that he now feels it would have been better to make a documentary about love, rather than the sickly-sweet holiday rom-com.

“There is such extraordinary love that goes on every minute in so many ways all around the world,” Curtis said.

“[It] makes me wish my film was better; it makes me wish [that] I’d made a documentary just to kind of observe it.”

Grant, who plays the UK prime minister, also appeared in the special, and expressed his embarrassment over the well-known Number 10 dance scene.

“I think I saw it in the script and thought ‘I’ll hate doing that’,” the actor recalled.

“No Englishman can dance when they’re sober at 8am in the morning. And to this day, you know, there’s many people, and I agree with them, and we think it’s the most excruciating scene ever committed to celluloid.”

Thompson revealed that when the cast had finished filming, Grant approached her “and said, ‘Wasn’t that the most psychotic thing we’ve ever been in?’”