The 7 plot holes that ruin The Holiday and make it FAKE after Jude Law shattered the dreams of the film’s biggest fans
JUDE Law left The Holiday fans stunned and heartbroken with his shocking revelation about the beloved Christmas film this week.
Grimacing as he realised he was about to dash viewers’ hopes and dreams, Jude admitted during an interview on BBC Radio 2 that the quaint English cottage Kate Winslet owns in the movie didn’t actually exist.
Instead, they used a set – with the exterior set up in a “field” somewhere, and the interior shot in a Los Angeles studio.
However, Jude’s revelation comes as viewers have spotted a whole load of other discrepancies in the 2006 movie that are only now coming to light.
Snow way!
The exterior of Iris (played by Kate Winslet) cottage wasn’t the only thing about it that was fake.
In the film, Cameron Diaz’s character Amanda does an impromptu house swap with Iris – temporarily relocating to the fairytale cottage.
Numerous scenes show the abode covered in a blanket of snow.
However, Cameron told Vulture that it was all pretend.
“We covered all the hillside with this fake snow, which was totally biodegradable,” she said.
“It was the most incredible — it doesn’t snow in England.
“It rains in England. But there are swabs of snow.”
Funnily enough, there were actually three snowfalls during the filming of the movie in England.
However, it was never enough to create the snow “blanket” director Nancy Meyers was after.
Heel-y hard work
One of the most famous scenes for Cameron’s Amanda is when she leaves the cottage to head to the airport, before realising she’s making a huge mistake.
She then stops the car, tells the driver she’s off, and sprints back to her love interest – Jude’s Graham.
The scene, which involved Cameron looking glam in a designer ensemble, filled just seconds on the big screen.
But she admitted it took a lot longer to actually shoot.
“I was running, like, seven miles a day in heels,” she added to Vulture.
The UK's highest-grossing Christmas movies of all time
1. The Grinch (2018) – £424,000,000
2. Home Alone (1990) – £376,000,000
3. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) – £283,000,000
4. Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (2000) – £273,000,000
5. A Christmas Carol (2009) – £256,000,000
6. The Polar Express (2004) – £250,000,000
7. Elf (2003) – £180,000,000
8. The Holiday (2006) – £162,000,000
9. The Santa Clause (1994) – £150,000,000
10. The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018) – £137,000,000
Figures accurate as of November 2024
“That whole scene took a week to shoot. That wasn’t even in the script!
“They only used two shots, but we shot like ten shots of me running across ten different fields.
“And I’m wearing that Valentino cashmere, wool trench coat, a turtleneck cashmere sweater and jeans, and my high-heeled boots.”
Out of her league
Another plot hole viewers have spotted is that Iris would never have been able to afford the Surrey cottage on her journalist salary.
The cottage that inspired Nancy to build her replica sold for a whopping £675,000 not so long ago.
And given that Iris would have been on around £24,000 a year in real life, there’s no way she could have had enough to shell out on a chocolate box home.
In addition, she would have had to commute daily from Surrey to London – a journey that would easily have cost her thousands of pounds, and hours, a year.
Quick turnaround
The speed that Iris and Amanda sort out their house swap is another contentious point in the film.
Given that they both had full-time jobs – Iris as a journalist and Amanda as a movie trailer editor – it’s unlikely that they would have been able to get holiday authorised, flights booked and bags packed in the 24 hours it’s said to be in the film.
They also took a huge gamble as neither did any research into the other’s home.
But thanks to it being a romantic comedy, their gamble paid off.
As Amanda was thrilled to arrive at Rosehill cottage, Iris was more than impressed with the luxurious additions in the Los Angeles mansion she temporarily called home.
Phone home
While it’s much more common these days for young children to have mobile phones, it wasn’t the case back in 2006.
So the idea that Jude’s Graham’s daughters – who were meant to be aged five and seven – had their own mobiles was somewhat unbelievable.
The phones provided a major plot point too, as the girls kept ringing their dad on theirs – leading to Amanda becoming suspicious Graham was cheating on her.
However, she eventually discovered the truth, by which point his daughters’ phones were nowhere to be seen.
Time’s up
Others pointed out that the timeline of the film is almost entirely inaccurate.
At the beginning of the movie, Iris’ newspaper boss gives a hint of the date as he says it’s the week before Christmas.
And, according to estimations by Cosmopolitan, the newspaper office would be closing as close to Christmas as possible – so around the 22nd December.
That means that Iris and Amanda would have been starting their holidays on the 23rd December.
However, there’s no mention of it being Christmas Eve or Christmas Day for some of the film’s most important events, such as Amanda going on her date with Graham.
Viewers also wondered where Graham’s two children were while he was off with Amanda.
Sore point
But arguably the most devastating plot hole of them all is Jude’s revelation that Rosehill cottage “doesn’t 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 in the Radio 2 interview.
“So she just hired a field and drew it and had someone build it.
“But here’s the funny thing, if you watch it. So, we were shooting in the winter here.
“And every time I go in that door, we cut and we shot the interiors in LA about three months later.”
Comedian Kerry Godliman, who was also being interviewed on the show, was horrified and squealed: “No, please stop!”
While host Zoe was equally distraught and added: “We don’t want to hear anymore. We can’t bear it.”
Looking somewhat sheepish, Jude then said: “Just burst the bubble, sorry!”