Richard Curtis Has Admitted That He Regrets The Way His Films Discussed Women's Bodies

The creator of some of the most beloved romcoms of all time — see: Four Weddings and a Funeral, Love Actually and Notting Hill — has expressed his regret at how his films discussed women’s bodies.

Speaking at The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival, screenwriter and director Richard Curtis acknowledged that jokes about women’s weight ‘aren’t any longer funny’, and expressed his regret about setting a film in Notting Hill without a single Black character in his 1999 film of the same name.

Martin McCutcheon’s character in Love Actually was subjected to fatphobic remarks.

Curtis was speaking at the festival to his daughter, activist Scarlett Curtis, who asked her father about the ‘growing criticism around the ways your films treated women and people of colour’.

Asked whether there were things he’d done differently, Curtis admitted that he regretted many of his earlier works, which featured predominantly all-white and straight characters. 'Yes, I wish I’d been ahead of the curve. Because I came from a very universe, school and bunch of university friends, I think that I’ve hung on, on the diversity issue, to the feeling that I wouldn’t know how to write those parts,' he stated.

‘I think I was just sort of stupid and wrong about that.’

Bridget Jones’ weight was a focal point of the films.

On how his films have aged, Curtis added: ‘I remember how shocked I was five years ago when Scarlett said to me, “You can never use the word ‘fat’ again.” Wow, you were right. In my generation calling someone chubby [was funny] — in Love Actually there were jokes about that.

‘Those jokes aren’t any longer funny.’

In Bridget Jones’s Diary, Renée Zellweger’s character is described as having a ‘bottom the size of Brazil’, as the film focuses on Bridget Jones’s appearance and weight. In Love Actually, the character of Natalie, played by Martine McCutcheon, was also at the receiving end of fatphobic comments in the 2003 film – including from an ex-boyfriend who remarked: ‘No one’s going to fancy a girl with thighs the size of big tree trunks.’

Naomi May

Digital Editor

Naomi May is a seasoned culture journalist and editor with over ten years’ worth of experience in shaping stories and building digital communities. After graduating with a First Class Honours from City University's prestigious Journalism course, Naomi joined the Evening Standard, where she worked across both the newspaper and website. She is now the Digital Editor at ELLE Magazine and has written features for the likes of The Guardian, Vogue, Vice and Refinery29, among many others. Naomi is also the host of the ELLE Collective book club.