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About The Production

This article is owned by www.notting-hill.com . No copyright infringement is intended. 

Filming on location in West London and at Shepperton Studios for Notting Hill began on
April 17 1998, marking the beginning of the second stage of the filmmakers’ journey from
script to screen. Like many good ideas, it had taken time to evolve. 

Screenwriter Richard Curtis says, "When I was lying sleepless at nights I would sometimes
wonder what it would be like if I just turned up at my friends’ house, where I used to have
dinner once a week, with the most famous person at that time, be it Madonna or
whomever. It all sprang from there. How would my friends react? Who would try and be
cool? How would you get through dinner? What would they say to you afterwards? That
was the starting point, the idea of a very normal person going out with an unbelievably famous person and how that impinges on
their lives." 

With Four Weddings and a Funeral having made cinema history, it was inevitable that Notting Hill would find itself from the
outset attached by comparisons and expectations. 

"Notting Hill," says producer Duncan Kenworthy, "is not a sequel. Of course people will
have expectations and we hope to live up to those expectations, but we are certainly not,
as we go about making the film, comparing it in any way. It is another romantic comedy,
but very different from Four Weddings which was a story of big social events with none of
the real life in-between. Notting Hill is the complete opposite, the day-to-day details of a
love affair. What makes it unusual and special is that it is a love affair between the most
famous woman in the world and just an ordinary guy." 

When it came to looking for a director for the project, the producers went for theatre and
television director, Roger Michell. 

"Finding someone as good as Roger," says Kenworthy, "was just like finding the right actor to play each role. Roger shone out.
He has an absolute nose for truthfulness." 

This view is echoed by executive producer, Eric Fellner, who says, "Roger’s principal interest is in character. When you have
that truth of character combined with a script as solid as Richard’s you get something very special." 

With Michell on board, thoughts turned to casting. "Whenever you’re asked about casting your film," says Kenworthy, "there’s
always a fiction that whomever you cast was always your first choice, but I have to say that Julia Roberts was the one and only
person we thought of for the part of Anna. I remember saying to Roger, ‘let’s offer it to Julia’ and Roger said, ‘we’ll never get
her.’ So when Julia’s agent said it was the best romantic comedy she had ever read, I thought that was a good sign." 

Michell comments, "What Julia brings to the part is an unavoidable coincidence between who she is-a fantastically famous film
star, and what her role is--a fantastically famous film star. However she is still acting a part. She is not playing Julia Roberts,
she’s playing Anna Scott, another person entirely." 

"Julia has a unique ability to come alive when the word ‘action’ is spoken. She has a kind of gift for life, a spontaneity and
distillation of real life which suddenly, like a match striking, goes off on action which is awesome." 

When casting the role of William, the decision to offer it to Hugh Grant was unanimous. 

Kenworthy says, "Hugh is one of the only actors who can speak Richard’s lines perfectly, like an expression of Richard’s inner
rhythms." 

Michell adds, "Hugh does Richard better than anyone else, and Richard writes Hugh better than anyone else. I think that’s a
writer/actor marriage made in heaven. Hugh has brought a fantastic skill to a part which I can’t imagine anyone else doing." 

Commenting on the casting, Fellner says, "I think Hugh is a phenomenal leading man in a film of this sort. And Julia has proven
many times before that she is the queen of romantic comedy." 

Central to the story of Notting Hill is William’s group of supportive friends. These roles went to Hugh Bonneville, Tim
McInnerny and Gina McKee, with Emma Chambers as Honey, William’s sister, and Welsh actor Rhys Ifans cast as Spike,
William’s flatmate from hell. 

"It’s rather like assembling a family," Michell explains. "When you are casting a cabal of
friends, you have to cast a balance of qualities, of types and of sensibilities. They were the
jigsaw that had to be put together all in one go, and I think we’ve got a very good variety
of people who can realistically still live in the same world." 

"One of the great things about casting this sort of film in the UK," says Kenworthy, "is that
we have a wealth of brilliant actors to draw on. We looked for people who would be
absolutely the best actors to play these roles as realistically as possible- and let comedy
grow naturally out of character, rather than the other way around." 

Summing up the overall appeal of Notting Hill, Kenworthy remarks, "I think one of the great things about Richard’s writing is
that it is drawn from a positive view of life. This is a very difficult way to write comedy, which is most often a sort of
ripping-apart of human pretensions. But Richard doesn’t do that. His writing always seems to remind you that people are
genuine, vulnerable, special--funny because of how loveable they are, not simply how stupidly they behave."

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