SUBMITTED BY Timbo

November 5, 2003 — The writer-director of "Love Actually", Richard Curtis, who has achieved fame and fortune thanks to previous efforts like "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "Notting Hill", talks to USA Today about his most recent movie.

Curtis promised himself he would direct his next script. That it is an unwieldy ensemble piece that weaves nine stories together is just the luck of the draw. "But the flip side is that nobody had time to see through me," he says, ever the optimist.

A few cranky critics have dismissed this typically glossy Curtis confection as so much saccharine goo with uneven resolutions.

But there is one crowd-pleasing piece of Risky Business that would melt the heart of even the most jaded journalist: Grant's unlikely prime minister, smitten with an underling (newcomer Martine McCutcheon), shakes a tail feather and then some toJump by the Pointer Sisters. In the hallowed halls of 10 Downing Street, no less.

"Hugh now says he will never dance again in public because he feels he's outed," Curtis says. "We've got some fantastic outtakes, as you can imagine. There's a shot where he goes across a hallway and he did that 47 times. So we've got every single variation. Riverdance dancing, the funky chicken, the Egyptian. We've got him leaping on the word 'jump.' He was very game that day. At least he got to keep his trousers on."

Curtis came up with the idea for Love Actually while on vacation in Bali recovering from a bad back. "Every day I would go on an hour-long walk in order to stretch and get a bit healthier. I just scoured through my life and the lives of people I knew, and every day I would come back with one story."

Read the rest at the link below.