Thomas Brodie-Sangster, the child star from ‘Love Actually’, says romcoms aren’t what they used to be

Thomas Brodie-Sangster was only 13 years old when he filmed Love Actually in 2003. The cast of the Christmas-set movie — now a seasonal classic — was filled with Hollywood stars, ranging from Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman to Emma Thompson and Keira Knightley. Yet these renowned actors did not overshadow the very young Brodie-Sangster, who won over audiences as Sam and his tender preteen love story. The British actor is now 35 and recalls that role fondly, as it marked his breakthrough to fame. However, he regrets that the magic of early-2000s romantic comedies has faded with the rise of streaming platforms. It has led to cheaper productions and “rushed scripts,” the London-born actor told The Telegraph.

For Brodie-Sangster, Love Actually was filmed in the “pre-smartphone” years, which he now considers a “bygone era.” “It was a kind of simpler time, and maybe that is more romantic,” he said. “And there were some greats, like Nancy Myers and Nora Ephron, who did some brilliant stuff in the 90s: When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, they’re just brilliant films."

Still, he’s confident the industry will once again treat romantic comedies with the care he believes they deserve. “Things kind of go around and come around, fashions change and when they’re done well, a good romcom can be brilliant,” he said, adding: “I hope that they will come back around.”

In any case, in recent decades Brodie-Sangster has become better known for his roles in action films, such as the Maze Runner saga (2014–2018), the Star Wars sequel The Force Awakens (2015), or, more recently, the audio movie Unsinkable (2024). In fact, when discussing the possible reasons for the decline of the romantic genre in cinema, the actor suggests that today studios invest most of their money in action or superhero films because romantic comedies tend to perform worse at the box office.

A recent example is Materialists, starring Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, and Chris Evans. The film grossed around $108 million worldwide, a figure negligible compared to box office hits in the same genre from the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Love Actually itself, for example, grossed more than $245 million worldwide in its day, while earlier romantic comedies like Notting Hill (1999), starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, earned nearly $364 million. According to Forbes, the highest-grossing romantic comedy of all time remains Pretty Woman (1990), with $463 million in earnings.

“I don’t know whether less people are going to the movies, so perhaps budgets are down on those sorts of films, and only up on action movies, or the Marvel world, for example,” said Brodie-Sangster. “So [romcoms] are more reserved for the streamers, perhaps, and maybe that’s changed as the budgeting and the scale that they can do. When the volume goes up, the quality can — not necessarily always does — but can go down.”

Another factor the actor highlights for why romantic comedies are no longer what they used to be is that many stories are now designed to premiere directly on streaming platforms rather than in theaters. This happened in 2018 with The Kissing Booth, starring Jacob Elordi and Joey King, which was released only on Netflix despite its success; or in 2023 with Shotgun Wedding, starring Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel, which premiered directly on Prime Video without a theatrical release.

Brodie-Sangster said that he usually receives scripts that feel “rushed”, because movie and TV writers feel “they need to tap into the zeitgeist of what’s happening at this moment immediately, otherwise the public is going to be on to something else.” “It’s quite rare to find a good, fairly well-polished script. All scripts are, nowadays, rushed because they kind of have to [be],” he explained. “They get green lit for a certain period of time. Then they just have to send out whatever they’ve got to get some attention. And so often it’s just not very good.”

At the end of November, Brodie-Sangster once again stepped into the role of Sam and wore a parka like the one he had in Love Actually for a commercial for the new Google Pixel. The ironic ad shows the actor on the bench where he filmed the famous scene with Liam Neeson —who plays his stepfather— and recreates several of his standout moments from the story, such as when he plays the drums. But each time he thinks a fan is photographing him, they are actually using the zoom on their new smartphone to capture something unrelated to him.

“I thought it was quite funny and I thought it only really works if it’s done in a manner that’s a little bit silly, and not poking fun of Love Actually, but perhaps poking fun of me slightly… Ricky Gervais sort of style,” he said.

Beyond the joke in the commercial, he says there are many Love Actually fans who still recognize him and keep asking for a sequel more than two decades later: “It’s lovely to be associated with Christmas … it’s not something I get bored of. It’s something I’m quite proud of and happy to have been a part of. I mean, love doesn’t really go out of date.”

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