Richard Curtis has expressed regret over his depiction of women and jokes about body size in films such as Love Actually and Bridget Jones’s Diary, after being interrogated by his daughter.
The British screenwriter and director admitted that jibes about women’s weight “aren’t any longer funny”, and he said setting the 1999 hit film Notting Hill, starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, in the diverse London neighbourhood without any black characters was wrong.
Curtis was responding to questions from his daughter Scarlett, an activist and writer who curated Feminists Don’t Wear Pink (and other lies) at the Times and Sunday Times Cheltenham literature festival.
Admitting he regretted his fat jokes, he said: “I remember how shocked I was five years ago when Scarlett said to me: ‘You can never use the word “fat” again.’ Wow, you were right. In my generation, calling someone chubby [was funny] – in Love Actually there were jokes about that. Those jokes aren’t any longer funny.”
Asked whether he regretted the lack of people of colour in Notting Hill, he said: “Yes, I wish I’d been ahead of the curve. Because I came from a very undiverse school and bunch of university friends, I think that I’ve hung on, on the diversity issue, to the feeling that I wouldn’t know how to write those parts. I think I was just sort of stupid and wrong about that.”
Female characters in several of his films are body-shamed, and many of his earlier works featured little diverse representation, with mostly white, straight characters.
In Bridget Jones’s Diary, Renée Zellweger’s character is constantly criticised for her appearance and referred to as plump or overweight, despite weighing about 60kg (9st 7lbs). She describes herself as having a “bottom the size of Brazil”.
In Love Actually, Natalie, played by Martine McCutcheon, the tea lady for whom the prime minister falls, is referred to as “the chubby girl”.
