Richard Curtis admits regret over weight jokes and lack of diversity in films

Love Actually and Notting Hill director says jokes calling people chubby ‘aren’t any longer funny’

Richard Curtis has expressed regret over his depiction of women and jokes about body size in films such as Love Actually and Bridget Jones’s Diary, after being interrogated by his daughter.

The British screenwriter and director admitted that jibes about women’s weight “aren’t any longer funny”, and he said setting the 1999 hit film Notting Hill, starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, in the diverse London neighbourhood without any black characters was wrong.