Five Ways ‘Love Actually’ Ruined My Life

I saw Love Actually right when it came out in 2003. My friend Mike had to see it for a marriage class he was taking at Fordham and I was a sophomore at NYU (living in Lafayette, what what!) so we saw it down in Battery Park. I just remember leaving the theater and it being so quiet and snowy and wintery outside and just feeling so great afterwards.

I’ve now watched it every Christmas season since then and I have to assume that’s due to more than just my intense, all-my-life, practically, love for Hugh Grant (who was born the same year as my dad…great.)

Anyway, I love when the daughter says “duh!” to the question, “There was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus?” I’m a sucker for any movie with interweaving stories (Magnolia is in my Top 10 of all movies) and I always know the funeral set to the Bay City Rollers is going to make me cry. And I definitely can’t stop yelling, “Don’t answer the phone!” at Laura Linney. Seriously, girl, you’ve gotta live your own life too!

So here are five ways Love Actually has ruined my life:

1. Want to Be In the Christmas in This Movie

I think I especially like Christmas movies because they all exist in a magical land where even if things go bad…it ends up good in the end. You know? Christmas movies turn out okay! And that’s just not real life. But London at Christmastime combined with all these pretty faces and stories is just, the best. It’s the combination of everything I want at Christmas but which (usually) doesn’t exist.

2. That. Dancing. Scene. 

I read all the 10 year anniversary stuff too so I know apparently Hugh Grant did not want to shoot that scene. Well, you know what, Hugh Grant? You should be happy you did that scene because it is amazing. (Actually, don’t be mad at me, Hugh Grant! I love you!)

Anyway, the song is perfect, his dance moves are perfect, the end is perfect. I may or may not have watched a GIF set of it for an hour last year. The details aren’t important.

3. Missed Out On The Walking Dead Initially Because of Andrew Lincoln

I want to be clear: being in love with your best friend’s wife and creepily taping only her at their wedding is not something I agree with. I also don’t agree with showing her a grand romantic gesture and then her kissing you.

BUT – I love when he zips up his sweater to Dido and I love when he talks to Laura Linney at the wedding and for those reasons I was not sold on watching him in The Walking Dead. Obviously once I did start watching I forgot about his Love Actually character but he’s just so cute and British in Love Actually it’s hard not to prefer that to dirty Rick Grimes! (Okay I like Rick too, fine. But I’m not caught up on this season at all so maybe he got really terrible, who knows.)

4. The Liam Neeson/Step-Son Storyline Kills Me Every Time

I’ve never sat down and ranked the different stories in Love Actually but if I had to, I think these guys are number one with Prime Minister/Natalie a close second.

I love when Liam Neeson is finding out the kid’s problem is that he’s in love and he says “she or he.” I love that the go-to movie is Titanic for romantic problems because, duh, that is the truth. And I am such a sucker for when he calls him DAD at the end! They only have each other now and they’re united now! Alone together! I love them.

Also, the boy’s crush Joanna is so cute and her rendition of “All I Want for Christmas Is You” – the greatest Christmas song of our time – is incredible. And ending with that KISS! OMG!

5. Forever Making Every British Person Say the Word “Table”

One of the less interesting storylines has a pretty good payoff in Wisconsin with Colin. He obviously meets a group of hot girls immediately in Wisconsin because obviously the United States is FILLED with hot girls. Also, duh, we’re all suckers for British accents. A British friend of mine told me a cashier was hitting on him and called him Colin Firth so he got very full of himself and I had to tell him, “oh you look nothing like Colin Firth, we’re just all tricked by British accents, sorry.”

So I love when they’re fawning over his accent and making him say words and swooning. Until they get to “table” and realize that’s the same. Aw, guys.

One of my favorite tweets (which my British boss also loved) is about British accents from Eireann Dolan:

So good. And so so true. Sigh.

I also LOVE saying “she is the SEXY one” in that way Ivana Milicevic says it. We don’t even have pajamas, guys!

(Main image via, Hugh Grant dancing via, Andrew Lincoln pic via, Liam Neeson pic via, Colin pic via)