My cultural awakening: Love Actually taught me to leave my cheating partner

Emma Thompson’s quiet suffering in the hit Christmas movie helped me to realise that I didn’t need to stay with someone who had betrayed me

I was 12 when Love Actually came out. In the eyes of my younger self it was a great film – vignettes of love I could only imagine one day feeling, all coloured by the fairy lights of Christmas. And there was even a cameo from Mr Bean himself, Rowan Atkinson. The film captured the romance I craved as a preteen, the idea that maybe a kid I fancied in my class would learn the drums for me and run through airport security to ask me out.

I was young enough to think it was sweet for Keira Knightley’s husband’s best friend to turn up on her doorstep declaring his quite obviously unrequited love. I even thought it was& adorable that he ruined their wedding video by filming only closeups of her face. Of course, I feel differently now about problematic moments like these – even if I do have the film to thank for introducing me to Joni Mitchell.