Hugh Grant had a strong reaction to seeing Love Actually for the first time

British actor had mixed feelings about the film when it was first released

It’s one of the most popular Christmas films of all time, but Love Actually didn’t exactly warm Hugh Grant’s heart when he saw it for the first time.

The British actor famously starred as UK prime minister “David” in Richard Curtis’s festive 2003 rom-com, alongside Emma Thompson, Colin Firth, Keira Knightly, Martine McCutcheon, Liam Neeson, Alan Rickman and Billy Nighy.

The film follows 10 different stories that depict love in a variety of ways, with many of the characters interlinked as the plot develops in the weeks ahead of Christmas.

In a 20th anniversary special that aired in 2002, Thompson, who had worked with Grant on a number of occasions, revealed how he reacted after the cast watched the finished version.

“Hugh came up behind me as we were walking out and said, ‘Is that the most psychotic thing we’ve ever been in?’” she recalled.

A sheepish-looking Grant then asked: “Did I say that?”

He ended up repeating his initial verdict during the interview, calling Love Actually “a bit psychotic” and “Richard [Curtis] on steroids”.

“But the thing is with him, what you have to remember is when he writes about love, he means it,” Grant added. “And that is quite rare.”

Hugh Grant with Martin McCutcheon (right) in ‘Love Actually’ (2003 Universal Studios)

In the movie, Grant’s character David falls for Downing Street staff member Natalie, played by former EastEnders star McCutcheon.

The Paddington 2 actor described shooting one notorious scene, in which David dances around No 10 to The Pointer Sisters’ hit “Jump (For My Love)” as “absolute hell”.

“There was this dance written and I thought, ‘That’s going to be excruciating and it has the power to be the most excruciating scene ever committed to celluloid,’” he recalled.

“I certainly dreaded filming it and Richard [Curtis] kept saying, ‘Don’t you think we’d better rehearse the dancing scene’ and I’d say, ‘Uh yes I’ve just got to learn some lines... my ankle hurts today.’ So it was never rehearsed.”

He continued: “Imagine you’re a grumpy 40-year-old Englishman, it’s seven in the morning, you’re stone-cold sober and it’s like, “OK Hugh, if you’d just like to freak out now. It was absolute hell.”

Hugh Grant and Martine McCutcheon in Love Actually (Universal)

Meanwhile, his co-star Firth remembered him making “a terrible fuss” about doing the scene but confirmed: “It did delight everybody and I think it’s the highlight of the film for a lot of people.”

In the same 20th anniversary special, asked if there were any parts of the film that made him “wince”, Curtis replied: “There are things that you would change, but thank God society is changing.

“My film is bound in some moments to feel out of date. The lack of diversity makes me feel uncomfortable and a bit stupid.”

He added that the love he sees people share in real life makes him “wish my film was better”.

“It makes me wish I’d made a documentary just to kind of observe it,” he said.

Curtis recently released a new festive film, That Christmas, an animated feature starring the voices of Nighy, Brian Cox, Fiona Shaw, Guz Khan and Jodie Whittaker.