Where are your favourite Christmas stars now?
They’re the stars of our favourite festive films and songs – but what’s it like for those who are thrown back into the spotlight every time the season rolls around? Annabelle Lee tracks them down to find out…
Hello, I’m Mr Napkin Head.’
It takes just those five words and the whole table falls about laughing. It’s early December in a village in West Sussex. You can feel the festive cheer in the air – groups of friends are dotted around the pub, chatting, laughing and drinking. At this table, a man has grabbed a napkin from the slightly sticky bar and put it over his face with a pair of glasses perched on top.
Everyone at the table erupts into hysterics. Not because the man did an especially good job of reenacting Jude Law’s character in The Holiday, but because they’re sitting with Miffy Englefield. No one else in the pub would know that they are in the company of a Hollywood movie star… but they are. Miffy (now 21) played Sophie, one of Jude’s delighted on-screen daughters, when she was just six.“It’s one of the things my friends love to do to embarrass me now,” she says when we speak.“They’re always teasing me about being in the film as a little girl, even all these years later.”
As soon as the calendar rolls around to November, as the shops begin to fill with tins of Quality Street and Roses, and the sound of jingling bells takes over our Spotify playlists, the same well-known faces begin to emerge. Faces we may have forgotten about throughout the year, but which now feel as familiar as pulling on a cosy pair of slippers. They are the stars of our festive films, songs and rituals. We can quote along with them, and our Christmases just wouldn’t be the same without them. But what is life like for these Yuletide favourites, whose best-known moments only grace our screens and playlists for a few short weeks? Did they ever imagine people would still be talking about them years later? As someone who has been known to put up my tree in November and who owns more
Christmas jumpers than normal ones, I decided to track down some of the most famous festive faces to find out.
Snow business
The school hall is packed with proud parents beaming, the festive lobsters and octopus have already taken to the stage, and now it’s time for the star of the show. As the spotlight reflects in her glittering hair, Joanna opens her mouth to belt out All I Want For Christmas Is You. It’s the most festive scene in Love Actually and one that leaves me feeling all warm and fuzzy every time I watch it (which is every year since its 2003 release, in case you were wondering).
Olivia Olson, the singer-songwriter from LA who played Joanna, was just 10 when she took on the role – and it’s still what she is best known for. When she auditioned for The X Factor: Celebrity last year, she told the judging panel,“[You] might remember me from a little Richard Curtis film called Love Actually.” Nicole Scherzinger immediately recalled her powerful voice and said,“You were unbelievable then, so I don’t even know what you’re gonna do today.” It was supposed to be a compliment but, if anything, it made Olivia more nervous. How could she compete with herself? “Simon Cowell knew me as the little girl with the powerhouse voice, so it felt like anything I could do now would be underwhelming,”
“People play my music when they’re decorating their tree. It’s a real honour to be part of that”
she says, reflecting on that moment on stage.“It’s an honour to be part of something as huge as Love Actually.
I had no idea how big it was going to be, and it’s a strange thing to have everyone know you from something you did so long ago.”
Still, the role has also undoubtably helped her career, and she went on to secure more acting roles and voiceover parts thanks to Love Actually. The same can be said for Miffy, who landed a role in Casualty
a few years after filming The Holiday.
Now 21 and a mum herself (if that doesn’t make you feel old, nothing will), Miffy started acting lessons, paid for by her grandparents, when she was five.“We hoped I’d get some adverts or something,” she says. Instead, she landed a role in a then-unnamed Christmas movie and found herself on a plane to LA ready to start work.
The first scene she filmed was actually the very last one, where all the characters are together for the first time at the New Year’s Eve party. Everyone was there: Jude Law, Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet. At six, Miffy didn’t know who any of them were – but she recognised Jack Black from School Of Rock. “I remember walking onto set that first day and Jude Law was in one corner, with Kate [Winslet] learning her lines in the other.” It sounds like the most intimidating first day of work ever, but luckily everyone was lovely. She says filming the Mr Napkin Head scene, which was only partly scripted, was one of the funniest moments. “Every time we filmed it, it was a bit different – we were genuinely laughing, we found it really, really funny. We laughed a lot on set,” she recalls.“I remember one time we were filming the scene in the tent when Amanda first meets Sophie and Olivia. We were all lying down and going through some of the dialogue and then it came to Jude’s turn. We all looked at him and realised he’d gone to sleep! They’d been up really late the night before filming and he just dozed off.”
Finishing filming was sad, but on the last day, Jude and Cameron bought Miffy and Emma Pritchard [who played Olivia] jackets with their names and “The Holiday” on the back. That is one excellent Christmas present.
With bells on
When Aled Jones goes shopping at Christmas, he can’t escape himself. “If I’m in a shop and Slade or Cliff Richard are playing, I always know what’s coming,” says the former choirboy who, at 14, was selected to record a new version of Walking In The Air, the song made famous by the 1982 animated film The Snowman.“When the kids were growing up and we’d be somewhere mundane like Homebase or B&Q, the song would come on and they’d point at me saying, ‘It’s you, it’s you!’ I remember dragging them out of the stores redfaced!” Now a presenter as well as a singer, he says his Spotify listens jump up into the millions in winter, and he gets “so many messages from people saying they play my music when they’re decorating their tree. It’s a real honour to be part of that.” Then there’s the royalty cheques… Aled still gets one through the post every January for Walking In The Air. “When my voice broke and I wasn’t getting as much work for a while, I was quite thankful for that cheque every year,” he laughs.“I just wish I’d written it!” When he was asked to record the song, Aled had never heard it before, or seen The Snowman.“We didn’t get Channel 4 in Wales, we got S4C, the Welsh equivalent,” he says. It was 1985 and Aled’s version was originally recorded for a Toys“R”Us advert but it became a hit and he found
himself at No5 in the Christmas charts and performing on Top Of The Pops. Quite unexpected for a teenager from Llandegfan, a village in North Wales.
“It was the maddest few years, looking back,” Aled says when we chat. “We’d find out I was going on a TV show and Mum and I would go to Burton in Bangor to find me an outfit. I remember going on Top Of The Pops and I turned up in London and all the trendy bods from the record label took me straight to Topman.”
Once, Prince Charles phoned Aled’s father, who was at work at the time, to invite Aled to perform at Kensington Palace. His father hung up straight away, thinking it was a friend joking, but it really was His Royal Highness. Luckily the confusion was cleared up and, weeks later, Aled found himself standing in Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s living room.
“I sang for about an hour and we chatted for a bit. And then I dropped a glass of water on the carpet,” he says. “I thought, ‘Oh my god, I’ll be sent to the Tower,’ but Diana was lovely – she just rubbed it in and said, ‘Oh, don’t worry, the boys do it all the time.’ It was quite amazing.”
Adventers assemble!
As soon as he heard the opening jingle bells, Shakin’ Stevens knew it would be a hit. And he was right – 35 years after its release, it still gets stuck in our heads at this time of year (the only thing you’ll need to jog your memory is “Snow is fallin,’ all around me…”). “The song was written for me, and when I heard the demo, I knew immediately that it sounded like a Christmas No1,” says the singer, who was the UK’s biggest-selling singles artist of the ’80s* and is known as Shaky.“It had everything there: Christmas lyrics, the right sentiments and a very catchy tune. It was the full package.”
Merry Christmas Everyone hit the top spot in 1985, and last Christmas the song made No6 in the UK charts. That’s the thing about doing something at this time of year: it makes you famous every year afterwards too.“That tells me all I need to know about what people think of the song,” says Shaky.“And what
I do like about hearing Merry Christmas Everyone in the shops is that I can see the genuine smiles on the faces of those listening while they’re buying their presents and enjoying themselves.” Aled, Olivia and Miffy also agree that being part of people’s Christmases is very special, and it’s something that follows them around year in, year out. Olivia is still recognised as “the little girl from Love
Actually” and says people always stop her and want to know what Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson are like (“They’re very lovely,” she tells me. “All the stars were so sweet to the kids on set”).“Every year people text me saying,‘Look what I’m watching!’” she laughs. “And recently my boyfriend’s cousin texted me out of the blue saying, ‘My girlfriend made me watch this film and I thought, “Wait, I know that person!” And it was you!’”
Miffy was even recognised last Christmas in her hospital bed: “It was December and a nurse came onto the ward and said,‘You look familiar, are you on TV?’ and we realised she’d seen me in The Holiday. It was a bizarre place to be recognised!” She’s also received messages from a woman who has a quote from the film tattooed on her leg, and another who based parts of her wedding around the film. And there I was thinking I was a fan.
Sleigh all day
Apart from the teasing by friends, becoming inundated with DMs and a spike in Spotify popularity, what does Christmas actually look like for these stars? It was the question I really wanted to ask and the answers didn’t disappoint.
Last year Miffy watched The Holiday with her partner,“just to see if she could get through it without cringing” (she couldn’t). For Aled, Christmas involves “closing the door, eating too much and watching rubbish on television”, but he does still perform
Walking In The Air. His voice is now a lot lower, but the writer of the song penned a version for the older Aled to sing, and every year he duets with his younger self in concert. And if you pop round to Olivia’s house this Christmas, you’ll probably find Love Actually on TV. “When we get the family together and something is on in the background, of course it’s Love Actually,” she laughs.“My mum watches it every year and she’s so proud. But it’s nice, it’s a big part of my family.”
These festive films and songs are a big part of our families too. They’re the movies we snuggle down to watch with our loved ones, and they’re the tunes we play as we’re decorating our tree or opening our presents on Christmas morning. They’re packed with memories and that’s why they – and the stars who made them – are so special. ◆
Aled Jones’s new album, Blessings, and book, Everyday Blessings, are both out on 6th November. Singled Out, Shakin’ Stevens’ hits collection, is out on 27th November; Shakinstevens.com