The Holiday is the eighth highest-grossing Christmas film of all time in the UK, offering a feel-good combination of stunning scenery, comedy moments and finding true love.
Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Cameron Diaz and Jack Black make up the stellar cast in the festive classic - a tale of two women who swap houses for Christmas and end up transforming their lives. But while we all love the quaint cottage owned by Kate's journalist character Iris in the film, actor Jude, who plays her brother, Graham, recently revealed all was not as it seemed.
And the revelation isn't the only part of the film to be questioned, with fans speculating that several details don't stack up in the iconic movie. We take a look at several 'dodgy' aspects of the film, from a seemingly unaffordable lifestyle to the absence of Christmas Day itself...
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© 2006 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. and GH One LLC. All Rights Reserved.)Chocolate box cottage
It was the beautiful home of journalist Iris, played by Kate, nestled in the traditional English countryside with a winding lane up to the door. But in an interview on BBC Radio 2, actress Jude revealed the quaint cottage owned by Iris didn't really exist.
"So the director, she's a bit of a perfectionist, toured that whole area and didn't quite find the chocolate box cottage she was looking for," he explained. "So she just hired a field and drew it and had someone build it." Despite how it may appear on screen, exterior scenes were filmed in the field, while interior scenes were filmed in Los Angeles.
Dodgy timeline
At the start of the movie we see Iris's newspaper boss, played by Rufus Sewell, say it's the week before Christmas meaning Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are just around the corner. But in subsequent scenes, after the journalist breaks up for the holidays, there is no mention of December 25.
Home swap logistics
Iris and her Los Angeles home swapper Amanda both work full time and fans have asked if the journalist and movie trailer editor would really have been able to take time off at a moment's notice. It is Christmas however, so maybe time off was already planned - but were flights between London and LA in the festive season really instantly available when the house switch was confirmed?
Moviegoers also cite the lack of research into each other's homes. Thankfully, both women were delighted with the Transatlantic switch - Amanda was initially unsure about Rosehill Cottage but the arrival of Iris's brother Graham soon cheered her up. And Iris was understandably thrilled by the luxurious living on offer in Amanda's LA mansion.
Mobile phones
Graham's daughters Sophie and Olivia are seven and five in the movie and fans find the idea they both have mobile phones back in 2006 hard to believe. When the girls keep ringing their dad, Amanda suspects he is cheating on her - or perhaps he's already married - making their use of the devices a major part of the plot. The American goes onto find out Graham is a widower and true love ensues...
The luxury lifestyle
Journalist Iris would have earned an estimated £26,000 back in 2006, so would she really have been able to afford the beautiful chocolate box cottage she lived in in pricey Surrey? The property that inspired director Nancy Meyers to build a replica sold for £675,000 in 2021, with new owners Jon and Cressida Bromley saying they didn't realise the significance until tourists turned up to take pictures.
The snow
No Christmas film would be complete without lots of the gorgeous white stuff and when it came to The Holiday, the UK weather was given a helping hand. "We covered all the hillside with this fake snow, which was totally biodegradable," Cameron told Vulture.
"It was the most incredible — it doesn’t snow in England. It rains in England. But there are swabs of snow."
English (US) ·