Hugh Grant and Martine McCutcheon in Love Actually, 2003
(Picture: Moviestore/Shutterstock)Call it a holiday miracle! Nearly 20 years since the cult-favorite film Love Actually was released, two deleted scenes reveal unshown plot points.
The romantic comedy is regarded by many as a top-tier Christmas movie with a star-studded cast that’s hard to top.
As it turns out, Love Actually originally featured two deleted scenes — one that depicted an older lesbian couple and the other with a man and woman in Africa.
In one of the scenes that didn’t make the final cut, the headmistress [Anne Reid] was set to have an intimate scene with her terminally ill partner Geraldine [Frances de la Tour].
The sweet yet emotional moment between the couple takes place at home where they laugh about “fancy” Christmas sausages. The two are seen curled up in bed and spirits are kept high despite Geraldine continuing to cough in pain. It’s later revealed by Emma Thompson’s character that Geraldine died before Christmas.
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In DVD bonus footage, director Richard Curtis said he was “really sorry” to cut this part of the film.
“The idea was meant to be that you just casually meet this very stern headmistress,” Curtis explained, “but later on in the film, we suddenly fell in with her and you realize that, no matter how unlikely it seems, any character you come across in life has their own complicated tale of love.”
The second axed scene would have taken viewers all the way to Kenya, per Grazia. The plot originally featured a man and woman who had survived famine, with the intention of emphasizing the film’s theme that ‘Love, actually, is all around’.
With two storylines being cut, it’s worth wondering what would have been added to Love Actually had they been kept in.
