Jude Law says he feels ‘guilty’ telling The Holiday fans the truth about the cottage

2006 romcom has become a festive classic

Jude Law has joked he feels “guilty” telling fans about one particular aspect of filming The Holiday.

The 2006 romcom, which follows Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz as two lovelorn women who do a house-swap at Christmas time, has become a festive classic, and is revisited by fans every year.

Law stars as Diaz’s romantic interest, and most of his scenes are set in a quaint, snow-covered country cottage in Surrey.

In a new interview in The Observer Magazine, the interviewer told Law they heard that the cottage “never existed”, to which he replied: “I know, and the interiors were in a Los Angeles studio. Because of this devotion [from fans], I actually feel guilty telling people, dismantling the dream… Listen, it’s real in the movie, that’s all that’s important.”

He also admitted he had no idea the film would become so adored. “It leaves me speechless but I find it rather moving,” Law said.

“I mean, it really was just another job. It was a very jolly one, we had fun making it, and I knew that I was in the hands of someone who knew how to pull something like that off. Then, yes, wave after wave of revisiting started to happen. You can’t plan for it but how delightful, in truth.”

The film was directed by Nancy Meyers, who wrote and directed The Parent Trap, What Women Want, Something’s Gotta Give and The Intern.

Law recently made headlines for appearing to tease a sequel, while in conversation with Meyers.

Diaz and Law in ‘The Holiday’ (Zade Rosenthal/Columbia Pictures)

And last month, he explained that the cottage in the film only exists because Meyers wasn’t able to find a house that she liked. “So the director, she’s a bit of a perfectionist,” he said.

“She toured that whole area and didn’t quite find the chocolate box cottage she was looking for. So, she just [rented] a field, and drew it and had someone build it.”

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Only the exterior of the house had been constructed, meaning the scenes inside the house were filmed somewhere else.

“So here’s the funny thing, if you watch it... We were shooting in the winter here. And every time I’d go in that door, we’d cut, and we shot the interiors in [Los Angeles] about three months later.”