Of all the dodgy behaviour in Love Actually, one character is the worst. And it’s not who you think

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Richard Curtis’ Love Actually is a classic Christmas film that is now both loved and hated. It swept up some of Britain’s finest actors into a witty romantic comedy that was a hit in 2003 and a television staple at this time of the year ever since.

Bill Nighy as Billy Mack and friends in Love Actually.

But as the years pass, the behaviour of some of its male characters looks, at best, dubious and, at worst, disgraceful. So we posed the question to two of our Culture writers, who is the worst character in Love Actually?

Chris Hook: Amid all the appalling (albeit very familiar) behaviour on unapologetic display from the various blokes populating Love Actually, the actions of one man elevate him to the top of the heap. Harry (Alan Rickman), I’m looking at you – and this is why.

Love Actually is, obviously, a film about love. The prime minister, David (Hugh Grant), says as much in the opening monologue: “Love actually is all around.”

Except that many of our protagonists simply can’t find it, and their desperate search drives the narrative. Consider David’s interest in staff member Natalie (Martine McCutcheon), Mark’s (Andrew Lincoln) unrequited attraction to his best friend’s new wife Juliet (Keira Knightley), and the hapless Colin’s (Kris Marshall) efforts to land anyone.

Then there’s Sarah’s (Laura Linney) failed attempt to begin a relationship with a colleague (Rodrigo Santoro), Jamie’s (Colin Firth) efforts to woo his housekeeper (Lucia Moniz), and young Sam’s (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) crush on classmate Joanna (Olivia Olson) – they are all looking for love.

Even the awkward nude stand-ins (Martin Freeman and Joanna Page) are trying to create something. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Which brings us back to Harry. He has exactly what they all seek: a beautiful family life with a loving and supportive wife Karen (Emma Thompson), two children and a comfortable home. Yet, because of the passing interest from an attractive young staff member, Mia (Heike Makatsch), he sets about destroying it all.

Emma Thompson as Karen and Alan Rickman as Harry in Love Actually.

Not only does Harry accede to Mia’s request for a dance at a staff Christmas party (in front of his wife), he tells her she looks pretty, then glosses over Karen’s observation of Mia’s attractiveness as she warns him to “be careful”.

Naturally, he is not. He spends a sizeable sum on a necklace for Mia, while giving Karen a Joni Mitchell CD.

Harry is a clumsily conniving, pathetic middle-aged man-child, content to create chaos for his family at the first sign of attention from a young woman.

We’ve all seen it – family life is hard, long-term relationships require effort but, hey, here’s someone new and exciting. So the wife and kids get left behind as dad heads off to make a new family somewhere else. It is left to the woman to endure the humiliation, calm the children and rebuild their lives.

It is the mundanity of Harry’s betrayal, the ghastly familiarity of his cringy interactions that makes him so appalling. In a bad crowd, he is the worst of the lot.

Garry Maddox: Firstly, Chris, how can Harry be the worst character in Love Actually when Billy Bob Thornton plays an American president who is vile, arrogant and so self-interested that he says to the British PM: “I’ll give you anything you ask for – as long as it’s not something I don’t want to give.” How could anyone believe someone that awful could be president?

Hugh Grant, as the British Prime Minister, and Martine McCutcheon, as Natalie in Love, Actually.

Then there’s Mia, who knows Harry, her boss, is married with a family but still goes out of her way to seduce him. “I’ll just be hanging around the mistletoe, hoping to be kissed,” she says salaciously. He should know a lot better given the power imbalance, but she is not blameless.

And what about Jamie’s lusty girlfriend (Sienna Guillory) who is having an affair with his duplicitous brother (Dan Fredenburgh)? Or stalky Mark who not only exclusively videos Juliet during her wedding but turns up at her front door and tells her to lie to her new husband that it’s carol singers.

Poor Harry is nowhere near as bad as any of them. Or even dopey Colin who tries to chat up every woman in sight and sings about having a “very big knob”.

All that aside, Love Actually needs Harry.

It’s a film about love’s many facets … love for a brother at the expense of your own romantic life for Sarah, overwhelming first love for Sam, yearning love for Mark, love for a longtime friend for Billy Mack (Bill Nighy), impossibly inconvenient (and now sackable) love for the PM, love that crosses language and cultural boundaries for Jamie and Aurelia, love in grief for Daniel (Liam Neeson) ...

The film needed a storyline about love taken for granted then rediscovered.

World-weary Harry considers an affair with decades younger Mia, commits to the extent of buying her expensive jewellery for Christmas then realises, when Karen finds out, what he has risked. “Oh, God. I am so in the wrong. The classic fool!,” he blurts out. Her response is heartbreaking: “Yes, but you’ve also made a fool out of me, and you’ve made the life I lead foolish, too!”

Their future in the film, as in life, is uncertain.

Mark (Andrew Lincoln) turns up at the front door of Juliet (Keira Knightley) in Love Actually.

Even if many of its characters’ actions have dated badly, Love Actually’s continuing charm is, as well as its humour, how flawed and human these characters are as they search for love.

At different times in our lives, many of us are these characters: falling in love for the first time, putting family first, falling for the wrong person, chasing sex, being deluded about our attractiveness, shyly uncertain, loving steadfastly, or seducing someone inappropriate. We might also stupidly ignore the love we have, like Harry, to chase something new.

He’s human, we’re human. He’s not the worst character, he’s just our fallibility writ large.

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