Love Actually’s Tragic Same-Sex Relationship That Was Cut From The Movie

As Hugh Grant’s prime minister so saliently surmised, love was indeed everywhere in ‘Love Actually’.

But sadly when it came to the final cut, a little bit of said love was removed, it has emerged.

In footage from the movie’s DVD release, handily unearthed on Buzzfeed, Richard Curtis reveals that there was a same-sex relationship between Anne Reid’s brusque headmistress and her lover, Frances de la Tour.

But the scenes, in which Reid’s character was caring for her terminally-ill partner, didn’t make it to opening night.

Curtis, who says he was 'sorry to lose’ the plot strand, adds: “The idea was meant to be that you just casually met this very sort of stern headmistress.

“Later on in the film… we suddenly fell in with the headmistress and you realize no matter how unlikely it seems, that any character you come across in life has their own complicated tale of love.”

As is, all the relationships in the finished movie, with its star-laden cast featuring Bill Nighy, Gregor Fisher, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Rowan Atkinson, Martine McCutcheon, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Andrew Lincoln and Keira Knightley, were heterosexual.

“I thought [the scene] was worth seeing,” he goes on, “even though it was a little clumsy towards the end.”

The 2003 Christmas-themed rom-com was a third movie smash for Curtis, following 'Four Weddings and a Funeral’ in 1994, and 'Notting Hill’, which he wrote but did not direct, in 1999.

It made a sturdy £165 million at the box office from its modest £30 million budget.

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Image credit: Rex Features