37 Things You’d Never Have Guessed About Love Actually

We call this dedication. Luckily, his dad plays drums and was able to teach him. Pretty handy if you ask us! Thomas still plays the drums even now - which is all the proof you need that Love Actually is for life, not just for Christmas.

On the film's tenth anniversary, Nighy told The Daily Beast, 'I did a rehearsal reading of the script as a favour to the great casting director, Mary Selway, who had been trying to get me into a film for a long time. I thought it was simply to help her hear the script aloud and to my genuine surprise I was given the job.' Frankly, we can't picture a Love Actually universe that doesn't include Bill.

Meaning that he was in pretty good company. We wonder if any famous faces jumped in on his 'festering turd of a record' (Billy's words, not ours).

Difficult to believe though it may now be, Nighy wasn't a dead cert for Billy Mack - though Curtis has refused to reveal who the other contenders were, joking that he'll 'put it in [his] will.'

The camera crew set up at Heathrow airport and filmed friends and family reuniting over the course of a week. And the tears just keep on coming...

Two of them were cut – including one same-sex love story, and another featuring an African couple. Last year, Director Richard Curtis opened up about his regrets with the film, saying 'the lack of diversity makes me feel uncomfortable and a bit stupid.'

Our deepest sympathies go to American fans of Love Actually, who have been missing out on what is undisputedly the best Sugababes song for all these years. During those ever-so emosh scenes, US audiences are treated to a lil bit of Kelly Clarkson.

It's a family affair! Their great-grandmothers were actually sisters (meaning they share a great great-grandmother). 'He'd call me cousin and ruffle my hair,' Sangster recalled to The Telegraph.

Rewatching this scene brings a whole new level of awks as we imagine was was really going on beneath the surface. The two actors had to shuffle on their knees to pretend they were swimming, and Firth ended up being bitten badly by a mosquito, causing his elbow to swell to the size of 'an avocado.' This would never have happened to Mr Darcy.

Alluding to the scene where Grant's character stands up to the President (played by Billy Bob Thornton) with a speech that references everything from Harry Potter to David Beckham's right foot, Blair said, 'I know there's a bit of us that would like me to do a Hugh Grant in Love Actually and tell America where to get off. But the difference between a good film and real life is that in real life, there's the next day, the next year, the next lifetime to contemplate the ruinous consequences of easy applause.' There's definitely an undergraduate dissertation title hidden in there somewhere. If anything, we're taking great joy from knowing Tony sat down to watch this masterpiece.

Because, as we all know, there was more than one lobster present at the birth of Jesus Christ. His son also pops up as the wise man with Spiderman face paint. Keep your eyes peeled!

The Downing Street housekeeper who greets the PM on his arrival is Freud's mother, while the music industry crowd at Billy Mack's party consists of the couple's friends. What good are some schmoozy industry connections if they can't bag you a part?

It was actually taken from the script for an earlier Richard Curtis vehicle, Four Weddings and a Funeral, with Hugh Grant intended to speak Marshall's lines. It was cut from the final version of the 1994 film, leaving Curtis to repurpose it further down the line.

He later explained that Firth's character took his brother's name so that the disgruntled kids could say 'I hate Uncle Jamie.' Classic sibling behaviour, if you ask us...

He wrote the screenplay with both of them in mind, having previously worked with Grant on Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, and with Thompson on The Tall Guy. It was an impeccably casting decision, giving us the iconic duo we never knew we needed.

Her character, Natalie, was actually called Martine in initial drafts of the script. This was changed before her audition to keep Martine on her toes, so she didn't assume the part was already in the bag.

'Now, which doll shall we give Daisy's little friend Emily?' We've popped them both on our Crimbo wish lists.

The split-level apartment, which we see after Sarah's office party, is based on Helen Fielding's home. The writer is a friend of Curtis, and worked with him on the film adaptation of Bridget Jones.

Bill Nighy told The Guardian, 'There were so many famous people in there, we used to talk about being on Liam Neeson Way or Emma Thompson Road or Hugh Grant Avenue. And it was a masterpiece of diplomacy, too; we all had the same size and type of trailer.'

Sadly, we can definitely imagine ourselves watching both films and then quickly obliterating them from our Netflix viewing history. Some things don't need a full two hours to tell.

The producers were a tad worried that audiences wouldn't believe it was a child singing, so they asked her to make her next take 'a little less good.' Justice for Joanna, our little Mariah Carey!

The producers wanted to cast someone who looked like the legendary supermodel, but predictably found this feat pretty difficult. The solution? Going direct to Claudia herself.

Again, no one quite fit the bill - so Curtis solved the problem by going straight to Linney, writing her a letter to explain the story. 'My part was originally written for another Brit, but he asked me to do it, and I was so excited to be asked,' Linney told the Daily Beast.

Linney's on-screen love interest, Karl, ended up being played by Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro. 'My character, Karl, was supposed to be British, but apparently they couldn't find the right actor,' he later explained.

The idea for the surprise band in the church came after Curtis attended the funeral of Muppets creator Jim Henson, where the puppeteers and the 'Muppets' sang a song. We're adding it to our wedding (and funeral?) inspo boards.

It's his way of getting back at Tory MP Bernard Jenkin, who 'stole' his former girlfriend. Some feuds run deep. In Love Actually, Bernard is Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman's 'horrid son.'

Who'd have guessed it! According to Curtis, Hugh was 'hugely grumpy about it.' He said, 'He kept on putting it off, and he didn't like the song. It was originally a Jackson 5 song, but we couldn't get it – so he was hugely unhappy about it.'

Curtis adds, 'We didn't shoot it until the final day, and it went so well that when we edited it, it had gone too well, and he was singing along with the words, so it was incredibly hard to edit.'

To allow for a realistic portrayal, future inhabitant Gordon Brown (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) escorted Curtis and his production designer Jim Clay on a two-hour tour of Number 10. Banned from taking photos or notes, Clay had to recreate the house from memory.

Curtis read out different options to the women in his office, and asked them to choose the least embarrassing messages. The result is stillllll pretty cringe, so we dread to think what the previous drafts were like.

'The art department did it, and then I said, "Well, can I do it?" because I like to think my handwriting is really good,' he later recalled.

To avoid the crowds of tourists usually found in the popular department store, the production team asked for it to stay open late at night.

AKA the most devastating scene to exist on TV screens ever. Her crying was totally unscripted. 'I've had so much bloody practise at crying in a bedroom and then having to go out and be cheerful, gathering up the pieces of my heart and putting them in a drawer,' she later said. Hear that? That's our hearts breaking.

Yes, really.

'It was my first kiss and on-screen kiss too,' she explained to E! News. 'I was really nervous because I kind of had a crush on Thomas back in the day and I was also worried, because I was taller than him if it was going to look weird.'

Pick those jaws up off the ground. Thomas' Sam was ten years old in the film, while Kiera played a married woman and homeowner. In real life, Thomas was 13 and Keira was 18. The film's bosses have since admitted that she was 'too young for the role,' but insisted that 'it worked.'

Love actually is all around! Keep that one in the bank for those upcoming Christmas quizzes.