Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/22/the-december-comfort-watches-2025-day-twenty-two-notting-hill/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58838

So, a story. More than a decade ago, I was having lunch with Tom Hanks, because he read my work and was a fan, and since I was in town on tour, he asked if he could meet me and I said, sure (actually, what was said, to me from my manager as I was getting off a plane at LAX, was, “You’re going to the Chateau Marmont. You’re having lunch with Tom Hanks. Don’t fuck this up”).

Tom Hanks was lovely, the lunch was lovely, and when it was done, as he was waiting for the valet to retrieve his car, some absolutely random dude came up, pulled out a binder, and started pitching a movie idea to Tom Hanks. And Tom Hanks, because he is Tom Hanks, for all the values of being Tom Hanks that there are in this world, stood there being lovely and polite and endured this random person posting up in his space and trying to make him take a meeting.

I relate this anecdote not to impress you that I once had lunch with a famous person, but to make the point that famous people really are not like you and me, and more often than not, that’s because the world will not let them be people like you and me. People like you and me don’t get pitched business proposals waiting for our car. People like you and me are allowed not to be “on” when we step outside our door and into the world. People like you and me can go shopping at any random Safeway we want and not cause a scene simply by existing. People like you and me get to be people, and not celebrities all the time. Yes, celebrities get fame, and sometimes fortune, and occasionally nifty free goodie bags at award shows worth more than most households in the US make in a year. But it does come at a cost, which is, the ability to just be your own fucking self, at the times and places of your own choosing, and not have anyone who might recognize you wield veto power over that.

Notting Hill, in addition to being just a lovely little romantic comedy about two people from entirely mismatched stations in life, trying to negotiate a space in the world they might get to call their own, is one of the best films out there showing at least a little bit of what it’s like to be famous to everyone, everywhere, all the time, forever and ever, amen. The person in the film cursed with such a blessing is Anna Scott (Julia Roberts, who was in fact the most famous actress in the world at the time, so, typecasting), who has the sort of worldwide fame that means that every single thing she says, any thing she does, who she might date or who she might have a feud with, equals miles and miles of newsprint across six separate continents, and probably at least an email or two in Antarctica.

One day, while in London doing publicity for her latest film, she wanders into a Notting Hill travel bookshop owned by one William Thacker, who is meant to be a self-effacing everyman but who is played by Hugh Grant, also at the height of his fame at the time, so at least the self-effacing part is there. William tries to be helpful to Anna as she browses, and she is having none of it, because she knows he knows who she is and thus her shields are up. Then later in the street there is an incident with an orange drink, William offers his flat, directly across the street, as a place for Anna to clean up, and the first spark is lit.

To say that there are going to be complications because Anna is famous on a level that is nearly beyond comprehension is not a spoiler; likewise that there will be complications because William underestimates, more than once, what a burden being that level of famous can be and how it can warp and distort friendships and relationships, even as the people involved try to compensate for them. Any relationship is hard, but being with a celebrity is like being in a throuple where the third partner is fame. And fame, well, it’s a fickle, fickle beast.

Nevertheless, it’s a delight to see everyone in the film give it a go. The film is scene after scene of either William trying to comprehend all of the everything that comes with the girl he likes being The Most Famous Person In The World, or Anna trying to be a normal person and not quite being able to do it because no matter what she does, her celebrity hangs all about her. This leads to delightful scenes like William trying to meet up with Anna at her request and unwittingly being dragooned into a press junket (a scene which I, as a former film writer who had been to dozens of such junkets, found deeply hilarious), or, one of my favorites, William taking Anna to his sister’s birthday party without telling a single one of his friends who the “new girl” he’s dating is, and watching them deal with it, with varying shades of success.

The dinner party scene is actually the heart of the film because it does so many things at once: It establishes Anna’s level of fame while at the same time giving her a little bit of time to escape it and be off the clock. It gives context to William by showing his friends and relations, and lets them all have the easy back and forth that comes from a lifetime of knowing each other. It also shows Anna watching it all, and, while not envying it, still noticing it and being able to compare it to her relatively lonely life.

And it shows that everyone in this scene is kind, and that others are noticing this kindness. This is the scene where we stop enjoying the utter mismatch of William and Anna, and start hoping the mismatch doesn’t keep them apart. Lord knows the film gives the two of them plenty of opportunities to mess things up, and they manage to do just that at least a couple of times.

Roger Michell directed Notting Hill, but it takes nothing from him and his skill as a director here to note this film is primarily a Richard Curtis film. Curtis is probably the most successful writer of British film comedy in the last 40 years, and most of these comedies have some sort of romantic bent. In addition to this film he wrote Four Weddings and Funeral (the film which made Hugh Grant a star, and which got Curtis his sole Oscar nomination), Love Actually, which he also directed, and two of the three Bridget Jones films. (He also wrote the Blackadder television series, beloved by Brits and US nerds, and also The Tall Guy, which is where I first encountered him, the vaccination scene of which I ripped off wholesale for my novel The Kaiju Preservation Society. I will send you a check, Mr. Curtis).

Of all of these films, I think Notting Hill shows Curtis at the height of his screenwriting powers. It’s extremely funny, which is great (especially when Rhys Ifans, as William’s daft roommate, is anywhere onscreen), but it’s also empathetic. It’s hard to do a really good job of making an audience feel sympathy for someone who is so famous that by all rights all that we should feel about her is envy, but Curtis does it. It helps that by this time he had been around famous people enough to understand that celebrity is cage. Gilded, yes, and with staff who will get you everything you want and need, but still a cage. He writes a good cage.

It also helps that this role could be thinly-veiled autobiography for Julia Roberts, who at the height of her celebrity was a media presence on par with Taylor Swift, for all the good and bad that comes with that level of fame, achievement and scrutiny. In 1999, there was literally no one else who could have understood Anna Scott better than Roberts. I have to think there are some parts of this movie that had to be cathartic for her, like the scene where, after a media scandal erupts and William is caught up in it, he suggests it will all just blow over in days. Anna knows better, and so does Julia Roberts, and I think it’s pretty clear both are making the rebuttal to William’s misinformed take.

The gilded cage of celebrity life in 2025 is, if anything, more solid than it was when this film came out. Miles of newsprint have been replaced with hours of celebscrolling on Instagram and Tik Tok, where famous people have to actively manage their online personas, or cede the management of it to a mob of influencers and bored social media mavens who are not their friends, no matter how close they imagine their parasocial relationships are. More people have wide fame (there are YouTube and Tik Tok celebrities who I’ve never heard of, but millions of Gen Z and Gen Alpha people have), but it’s harder than ever to make the money that used to be associated with fame. So all a lot of these newly-famous get is a grind to stay top of mind, and a lack of privacy, and, eventually, a very profound burnout.

It doesn’t sound like a lot of fun to me. At least Notting Hill suggests that sometimes, if you’re lucky, and with the right people, you might get to slip out of that gilded cage, and, if only for a moment, be your own person again. Fame is nice. Love and community is nicer. May everyone, even the famous, get to have it.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/12/22/the-december-comfort-watches-2025-day-twenty-two-notting-hill/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=58838