Love Actually may be one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time - but it has been subjected to some criticism over its storylines.
The 2013 romantic comedy features a vast number of intertwining storylines that left viewers in tears of sadness, joy and laughter.
With an all-star cast including Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Keira Knightley, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson and Colin Firth, the film was a box office success and has become a modern-day Christmas staple.
However, the movie has come under scrutiny due to all the relationships, which range from platonic friendships to scandalous love triangles, only include heterosexual couples.
As well as being criticised for its lack of LGBTQ+ storylines., others have pointed out that the cast is mostly white.
Things could have been very different had four diverse storylines that were cut from the Christmas-themed film had been left in the theatrical release.
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Two were filmed but were left on the cutting room floor and another couple were ditched in the development phase.
One incredibly emotional plot that was discarded from the final movie involved a headmistress and her terminally ill partner.
The couple were linked to the wider story by the subplot involving Emma Thompson's character Karen, whose son was a pupil at the headmistress' school.
The stern head was played by former Coronation Street star Anne Reid, while her partner was Harry Potter actress Frances de la Tour.
The headmistress returns from work to tend to her visibly sick partner, Geraldine, and tells her about her day.
Despite being very weak, it's clear that Geraldine is full of spirit despite her illness and the couple's bond is heartwarming.
The pair share just two short scenes together, with the second one featuring Geraldine coughing in bed and being comforted by the headmistress.
Viewers were supposed to be treated to a scene in which the duo bicker over their differing tastes in fancy sausages and display wicked senses of humours.
Then they cuddle up for the night in bed and Geraldine is seen coughing violently in her sleep.
In the next scene, it becomes apparent that the worst has happened and Geraldine has unfortunately died.
Emma Thompson's character then makes a moving speech about the headmistress' devastating loss.
Director Richard Curtis hated having to lose the tear-jerking scenes but explained they had to be taken out.
The entire storyline was scrapped because a prior scene about Karen's son was cut, so none of it would have made sense in the intertwined film.
Speaking about the scenes in the DVD's bonus footage, Curtis confessed: "I was really sorry to lose this.
"The idea was meant to be that he casually met this stern headmistress, and the idea was meant to be that later in the film, we suddenly fell in with the headmistress, and you realise that no matter how unlikely it seems, that any character you come across in life has their own complicated tale of love."
Another storyline that was filmed but didn't appear in the movie centred around two mothers in Kenya.
In an effort to show that "love actually is all around", Curtis and his team even shot scenes in Kenya that were never used.
The two mothers disapproved of their daughters' fiancés but supported each other through famine.
The two storylines that didn't make it out of the development phase were a schoolgirl who fell in love with her female friend and a girl in a wheelchair trying to find love.
Another plot-line featured two mothers in Kenya who disapproved of their daughters' fiancees, Richard told Empire, but it ended up on the cutting room floor.
"There was a big story about a schoolgirl who fell in love with another schoolgirl," Curtis told Empire
"And then we zoomed into a photograph at Laura Linney’s charity and it turned out these two Kenyan women were talking about how they didn’t like their daughters’ fiancés. There were a lot of fallers."
Curtis has also shared details of the scene he once planned to start the film with, which was later used in another film by a different director 10 years later.
"The movie originally started with a conversation between some guys in a bar. Oddly enough I think it was a joke that Judd [Apatow] then wrote in a movie ten years later," he explained.
"So this guy was talking about how he fantasised a lot about his wife’s death, because he thought there’d be a lot of women in cute black frocks at the funeral.
"Some of whom would hand him their phone number, saying, 'I know it’s going to be complicated for you. It doesn’t have to be deep.'
"I thought, ‘Well, there’s one bit. What comes second?’ Slowly building up this wave."
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