48 Fun Facts About The Holiday (2006) Movie

The Holiday's writer-director, Nancy Meyers, also made which of these films?

It's Complicated followed in 2009, but the title had turned up three years earlier as the name of a one-minute cue on The Holiday's soundtrack album.

In The Holiday, who plays Amanda Woods, the Los Angeles half of the house swap?

Cameron Diaz was in Nancy Meyers's head while the script was still being written: "She seemed absolutely the right choice for a California girl."

In The Holiday, who plays Iris Simpkins, the English newspaper columnist?

Kate Winslet had made period films but never a romantic comedy, and missed having a wig or an accent to hide behind; she and a co-star swapped nervous calls, sure they would be fired.

What does Amanda's company make in The Holiday?

Film trailers pay for her mansion and invade her head: a booming announcer keeps cutting in to narrate her love life, beginning "Amanda Woods is proud to present... her life."

For which newspaper does Iris write a column in The Holiday?

The Daily Telegraph pays Iris to write up weddings, so her editor hands her a scoop in front of the whole staff: the engagement of the colleague she has loved for three years.

What is the name of Iris's cheating ex-boyfriend in The Holiday?

Jasper Bloom accepts a first-edition book from Iris as a Christmas present, moments before his engagement to another colleague is announced to the whole office.

In which English county is Iris's cottage in The Holiday?

Surrey: the cottage's listing promises "an enchanting oasis of tranquility", and the quiet is too much for Amanda, who is ready to fly home within six hours of arriving.

Who plays Graham, Iris's brother, in The Holiday?

Jude Law had never done this kind of comedy, and the director wasn't sure he would fit the genre until the two of them sat down and went through the script together.

What is Graham's job in The Holiday?

Book editor by day, Graham turns out to be more than the carefree bachelor Amanda assumes: he is a widower raising two young daughters on his own.

Why does Graham first knock on the cottage door during Amanda's stay?

He is drunk and needs a bed: whenever he overdoes it at the local pub, he explains, his little sister puts him up so that he doesn't get behind the wheel.

What are the names of Graham's two daughters in The Holiday?

Sophie and Olivia are why Graham calls himself a package deal, "three for the price of one", when he finally tells Amanda that he loves her.

Why does Graham hide his daughters from the women he dates in The Holiday?

It helps him cope, Graham says: he splits his life into compartments because being a single working father overwhelms him, and he won't bring a woman home unless it might last.

Who plays Miles, the Hollywood musician Iris befriends in The Holiday?

Jack Black had the part written for him, yet his first reaction was to ask whether a romantic comedy had the right guy; hearing who would play Iris helped settle it.

What is the profession of Ethan, Amanda's unfaithful boyfriend in The Holiday?

Film composer Ethan shares his trade with Miles, who first meets Iris when he turns up at the gate to collect his colleague's laptop.

Who plays Arthur Abbott, the elderly screenwriter next door, in The Holiday?

Eli Wallach was 90 when he played Arthur, who enters the story lost: Iris finds him unable to pick out his own house after 47 years on the street, and drives him home.

Arthur tells Iris she is behaving like the best friend when she should be what in her own life?

The leading lady: Arthur prescribes a list of old films built around formidable women, such as Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve, and Iris calls his verdict "brutal, but brilliant".

Which organisation holds a gala in Arthur's honour in The Holiday?

The Writers Guild of America has to wait while Arthur is coaxed into going: "Let's get this embarrassment over with," he grumbles, after Iris has trained him for the walk to the stage.

What is the name of Miles's actress girlfriend, whom he catches with another man?

Maggie is caught arm in arm with another man while Miles is out with Iris; on the day of Arthur's gala she asks to be taken back, and he turns her down.

What does Amanda do in the car to the airport that sends her racing back to Graham?

She finally cries, for the first time since her parents split up when she was fifteen, and runs back to the cottage to find Graham in tears as well.

Where do the four leads of The Holiday end up celebrating New Year's Eve?

Graham's house hosts the party: Miles, who has never been to Europe, flies over to take Iris out, and both new couples see in the year there with the two girls.

Which screenwriting term does Arthur teach Iris after she drives him home?

A meet cute is how two characters meet in a movie, Arthur explains as she walks him to his door, and he applies it to their own encounter before admitting theirs "isn't quite that cute".

Which old-fashioned word does Iris use for what she has finally found as she shows her ex the door?

Gumption: Iris announces she has found "something slightly resembling" it, slams the door on the man who strung her along for three years, and screams with joy.

Which American star auditioned to play Graham in The Holiday, only to hear his British accent called the worst ever?

Robert Downey Jr. thought he was a shoo-in, he told Howard Stern in 2023, until one of the film's English stars delivered that verdict; he says he left with the gummy bears from the minibar.

Arthur tells Iris that which Hollywood legend came from her home county, though he was really born in Bristol?

Cary Grant "told me once", says Arthur, and Iris agrees that he was a local boy; the film never corrects the pair, though Grant grew up in Bristol.

Which future talk show host auditioned for the role of Miles in The Holiday?

Jimmy Fallon read scenes opposite another auditioning actor and found him so good that, he says, he never tried out for a film role again: "I quit the business."

Arthur says he added a single word to a famous line in which classic film?

Casablanca: his friends wrote "Here's looking at you", Arthur likes to say, and he was the one who added the "kid".

Which actor makes an unscripted cameo in the video rental store in The Holiday?

Dustin Hoffman happened to be passing, stopped to see what all the cameras were for, and ended up in the scene because he knew Nancy Meyers, who had never planned a cameo there.

Which 1967 film's music is Miles singing in The Holiday's video store?

The Graduate: Miles sings Mrs. Robinson between the shelves, then bets Iris she never knew that the song was written for the film as part of its score.

Which two stars appear uncredited in Deception, the fake action film glimpsed in The Holiday?

Lindsay Lohan and James Franco did it as favours: Nancy Meyers had directed Lohan in The Parent Trap and told her "she owes me everything", and Franco was a dinner-party acquaintance.

What does Iris spot in Arthur's home that tells her how big a name he once was?

An Oscar, gathering dust in his house, is Iris's first clue that the frail neighbour she has just driven home was one of Golden Age Hollywood's top screenwriters.

Which two actors play Amanda's employees Ben and Bristol in The Holiday?

John Krasinski and Kathryn Hahn played her staff; by 2022 Vanity Fair was noting that the two supporting players' profiles had since "skyrocketed".

Which writer does Iris quote twice in the opening narration of The Holiday?

William Shakespeare supplies "Journeys end in lovers meeting" and then "love is blind", the line Iris says she knows to be true after three years of loving a man who won't love her back.

Why was Iris's cottage in The Holiday built from scratch rather than found on location?

The real one was too remote: the cottage the designers found was hours from the crew's London base, so they built a shell of it in a field and shot the rooms on a soundstage.

How does Amanda end the row when she throws Ethan out at the start of The Holiday?

She punches him in the face, twice in Nancy Meyers's script, and he lands on the ground; she then walks back indoors and starts planning a holiday on her own.

Amanda says she and her parents called themselves what, until the night they told her they were splitting up?

The Three Musketeers: she thought her parents were joking until she spotted a packed suitcase in the hallway, and her father moved out that same night.

With whom has Ethan been cheating on Amanda at the start of The Holiday?

His receptionist, who is 24: Ethan swears nothing happened, then admits it and adds that she is in love with him, and Amanda has him out of the house within minutes.

Who composed the score for The Holiday?

Hans Zimmer even gets a shout-out on screen: running through his favourite film scores in a video store, Miles hums Driving Miss Daisy and credits it simply to "Hans".

Which song does a tipsy Amanda sing on her first night in The Holiday?

Mr. Brightside by The Killers comes off a CD she puts on while drinking alone; by the end of the evening the quiet has beaten her and she is planning to fly home the next day.

What does Miles write for Iris, having already written one for Arthur?

A melody: "Iris, if you were a melody," he says at the piano, "I used only the good notes," before playing the theme he wrote for her neighbour next.

What is the name of Iris's cottage in The Holiday?

Rosehill Cottage never existed: its shell went up in an empty field in four days, and in the film Amanda has to ask a passer-by where to find it.

What did The Holiday's crew hire for the English shoot, only for the real thing to keep falling anyway?

A snow machine: told that it hardly snows in that part of England any more, Nancy Meyers hired a company to fake it, and then it snowed about three times in the first week of filming.

Which designer does Arthur praise as if he were his tailor: "He cuts a nice suit"?

Hugo Boss gets the compliment from a man who admits he hasn't worn a tie in a long time: "I like this Hugo Boss," Arthur tells Iris as they dress for his big night.

Why does Amanda arrive at the cottage on foot, hauling her luggage through the snow?

The lane is too narrow for her driver to turn the car round at the far end, so he asks whether she can make it from there. Her answer: "No."

Which film's theme does Miles sum up in the video store as "two notes, and you've got a villain"?

Jaws needs only its two alternating notes, as Miles shows between the shelves in a routine that also takes in Chariots of Fire and Gone with the Wind.

What one thing does Amanda ask Iris before agreeing to swap homes?

Whether the town has any men: "Zero," Iris types, which is exactly what Amanda wants to hear. Iris's brother turns up on the doorstep her very first night.

What does Graham call the dinner-table character his daughters beg him to perform?

Mr. Napkin Head comes out only under protest ("we do not do Mr. Napkin Head for company"), and in 2022 Vanity Fair was still asking when he had officially retired.

On which night does Miles tell Iris they are going to celebrate "being young and being alive"?

Christmas Eve: both newly single, the two spend it over dinner together instead of alone; New Year's Eve comes later, when Miles offers to cross the Atlantic for a date.

In December 2022, Nancy Meyers shot down a widely shared report that The Holiday was getting what?

A sequel with all four stars was reported to start filming the next year; "sorry but it's not true," the director posted within a day, to more than 1,500 dismayed comments.