Notting Hill (film)

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For places named "Notting Hill", see Notting Hill.

Notting Hill

Directed by	Roger Michell
Produced by	Duncan Kenworthy
Written by	Richard Curtis
Starring	Julia Roberts Hugh Grant
Music by	Trevor Jones
Cinematography	Michael Coulter
Editing by	Nick Moore
Distributed by	MCA-Universal PolyGram Filmed Entertainment
Release date(s)	May 28, 1999
Running time	124 min.
Language	English
Budget	$42 Million (USD)
Gross revenue	$116 Million USD
IMDb profile

Notting Hill is a 1999 romantic comedy film set in the Notting Hill district of London, England, UK.

The screenplay was written by Richard Curtis who had previously written Four Weddings and a Funeral. In addition to Curtis, actor Hugh Grant, producer Duncan Kenworthy and other film crew members are reunited in Notting Hill. The film made over US $27 million its opening weekend, and eventually grossed $116 million.^[1]

1 Plot
2 Primary cast
3 Award nominations
4 Quotes
5 Behind the scenes
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

William Thacker (Hugh Grant) is the owner of an independent bookstore which specializes in travel writing in Notting Hill, London. Witty, cultivated and handsome, he has not coped well with his divorce and is currently sharing his house with an eccentric Welsh wannabe artist named Spike (Rhys Ifans).

Thacker encounters world famous Hollywood actress Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) during her trip to London when she enters his shop to buy a book. Shortly thereafter, they accidentally collide in the street, causing William to spill orange juice on both of them. He offers his house (just across the road) as a place for her to get changed. Anna accepts and they repair to his abode.

Right from the start, their love affair seems to be doomed. Although Anna feels at home with his circle of friends, William more and more realises that he is not cut out to be a famous actress's boyfriend. First, he is shocked when he finds out that she has an American boyfriend (played by Alec Baldwin), although Anna asserts that they have broken up. Some time later, after they spent the first night together at William's flat, careless talk by Spike down at the pub results in a throng of reporters at their doorstep trying to take their pictures. She leaves in a hurry, and William decides once and for all to forget her. However, over the months that follow, none of his friends' attempts to find him a girlfriend is successful.

Back in England to make a film, Anna Scott shows up at his bookshop once again, hoping to resume their love affair, but William turns her down. Only after he has rejected her, and she has gone again does William realize that he has just made the biggest mistake of his life. He and his friends search for Anna before she can leave for the United States, and in one of the final scenes, at a press conference, he persuades her to stay in England with him.

The film ends with Anna (apparently pregnant) and William on a bench in the park. A 2006 Bollywood film directed by Raj Kanwar and stars Akshay Kumar and Katrina Kaif, Bipasha Basu, Vivek Shaq and Manoj Joshi, called "Humko Deewana Kar Gaye", did take the ideas from this same film,if not a remake of it.

[edit] Primary cast

Scene from Notting Hill; William (Hugh Grant) introduces Anna (Julia Roberts) to his sister Honey (Emma Chambers)

Julia Roberts as Anna Scott
Hugh Grant as William Thacker
Richard McCabe as Tony
Rhys Ifans as Spike
James Dreyfus as Martin
Dylan Moran as Rufus the Thief
Emma Chambers as Honey
Tim McInnerny as Max
Gina McKee as Bella
Hugh Bonneville as Bernie

[edit] Award nominations

[edit] Quotes

Anna Scott: (trying to win the last brownie with the "saddest life" story) "I've been on a diet every day since I was nineteen, which basically means I've been hungry for a decade. I've had a series of not nice boyfriends, one of whom hit me. Ah, and every time I get my heart broken, the newspapers splash it about as though it's entertainment. And it's taken two rather painful operations to get me looking like this."
Honey: "Really?"
Anna Scott: "Really (points to her chin and her nose). And, one day not long from now, my looks will go, they will discover that I can't act, and I will become some sad middle-aged woman who looks a bit like someone who was famous for a while."
Spike: "I'm just going into the kitchen to get some food. When I come back, I'll tell you a story that'll make your balls shrink to the size of raisins."
Anna Scott: (referring to a print of the Marc Chagall painting La Mariée on William's wall) "Yes - Happiness isn't happiness without a violin-playing goat."
Anna Scott: "Rita Hayworth used to say 'Men go to bed with Gilda, but they wake up with me.'"
William: "Who's Gilda?"
Anna Scott: "Her most famous role. Men went with the dream... they didn't like it when they woke up with reality"
Anna Scott: "The fame thing isn't really real, you know. And don't forget, I...I'm also just a girl...standing in front of a boy...asking him to love her."
SCOTT OF PANTARTICA - Sun Headline after naked pictures of Anna Scott are found
William: Oh sod a dog! I've made the wrong decision; haven't I?
William: Woopsiedaisy!
Anna Scott: (after kissing William at the doorway) Probably it is the best, not to tell anyone about this
William: "Oh, sure...I tell myself sometimes, but don't worry, I won't believe it."

[edit] Behind the scenes

The film features the 1950 Marc Chagall painting La Mariée. In the story, Anna sees a print of the painting in William's home, and later gives him what is presumably the original.

According to director Michell in an article in Entertainment Weekly, the painting was chosen because screenwriter Curtis was a fan of Chagall's work, and because La Mariée "depicts a yearning for something that's lost." Producers had a reproduction made for use in the film, but had to first get permission from the painting's owners as well as clearance from the British Design and Artists Copyright Society. Finally, according to producer Kenworthy, "we had to agree to destroy it. They were concerned that if our fake was too good, it might float around the market and create problems." The article also noted that "some experts say the real canvas could be worth between $500,000 and $1 million."^[2]

In the scene at Honey's birthday party, Bernie asks Anna how much money she made on her last film; Anna replies that she made $15,000,000, the same amount Roberts made for Notting Hill. The soundtrack of the movie features an Elvis Costello cover of the Charles Aznavour song "She." The British film magazine Empire makes a brief appearance in the film, and Empire later listed this moment in its "201 Things That Rocked Our World."

Upon release the movie was heavily criticised by some for presenting an 'ethnically cleansed' vision of West London despite being set in one of London's most diverse and multicultural areas, a situation somewhat similar to the French film Amélie's vision of a idealised yet entirely caucasian Paris.^{[citation needed]}