Writer-director Richard Curtis was not entirely sold on Love Actually’s most famous scene, a annotated script being auctioned for charity has revealed.
The scene in question, from the 2003 Christmas romcom, saw Andrew Lincoln’s character Mark use cue-cards to declare his unrequited love for Keira Knightley’s Juliet, the new wife of his best friend Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor).
The sequence, which featured cards saying, “To me, you are perfect, and my wasted heart will love you…” has been mocked and parodied countless times over the years. Some have even tried to claim that it romanticises stalking.
“I came up with four things Mark could do as his big gesture,” Curtis writes in the annotations, seen by The Sunday Times.
“The people in the office chose their favourite and I went for it. I wonder: do we all regret the choice now?”
Actress Martine McCutcheon, who played the role of Natalie in the beloved flick, has strongly denied that the scene was “creepy” in any way.
“I don’t think it’s creepy at all,” she said. “I think people do crazy things when they are in love with people.
“He had his moment where he thought, ‘Enough now, I’ve told her how I feel, I love my friend too but I had to get it off my chest in the right way.’”
