It’s hard to talk about Love Actually without mentioning the rampant sexism, troubling relationship dynamics or weird age gaps. But despite it objectively having not aged well in the nearly two decades since it first came out, it’s still a non-negotiable festive tradition for lots of us. Sure we love to hate it – but we also just love it, and that, friends, is what the magic of Christmas is all about.
But one thing that isn’t very Christmassy at all is the housing crisis, right? Amid the unlikelihood of ‘ugly’ Colin travelling to America and immediately bedding a harem of hot ladies and Colin Firth’s Jamie successfully proposing to a woman he’d never even had a conversation with, was that somehow, all the characters seemed to live in housing wildly disproportionate to their salaries. The film’s portrayal of newlyweds Peter and Juliette’s home on a quaint London street – and not the multi-million pound Notting Hill mews it actually is – or of Juliette’s creepy stalker Mark’s ‘starving artist’s’ studio being primely located slap bang in the middle of the Southbank just isn’t realistic. It’s truly the most annoying thing about the whole film.
But despite their impressive accommodations, none of the cast would earn enough to even rent a two bed property in today’s London. Take Kiera Knightley’s Juliette, for example, who writer Richard Curtis recently revealed worked as an interior designer. According to Ask Gamblers, the average earnings of an interior designer today is £36,169, and with her new hubby a humble ‘office worker’ on £31,202, it begs the question how they can afford a mews home, which typically go for well over £1m.
Also named in Ask Gamblers research is aging popstar Billy Mack, who, as the wealthiest of the Love Actually Rich List, will make an estimated £200,000 in royalties for his Christmas number one single. Which doesn’t sound that much really, does it?
Prime Minister David – played by Hugh Grant – would be on a salary of around £161,400 (and, as we recently learned after Liz Truss stepped down after 45 days in office, earn a lifelong pension of over £110k) and Jamie’s crime novelist career, earning him just over £30k, was unlikely to have afforded him the characterful garden flat and Chiswick, or the holiday home in the South of France.
There are some characters who’s houses might be plausible on their salaries – primarily the large family homes of Director of a Design Firm Harry (Alan Rickman) on £67,500 and architect Daniel, on just under £50k. Assistant to the PM Natalie is back in with mum and dad in Wandsworth (the dodgy end) after splitting from her (clearly visually impaired) boyfriend, and on her salary of £25,947, is probably the most believable part of the whole film.