Joanna Page on embarrassing moment at Love Actually read-through: ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this in front of Liam Neeson’

Joanna Page has recalled an embarrassing moment from the first ever Love Actually read-through.

The Gavin & Stacey star appears in Richard Curtis’s 2003 Christmas romcom as Judy, a body double working in film.

Her character is required to perform sex scenes alongside fellow actor John (Martin Freeman), but the pair end up striking up a tentative romantic relationship off-camera.

Appearing on Loose Women on Tuesday (13 December), Page admitted that she’d only ever seen the film once.

She then shared a story from the set of the film, when she was sat at the read-through alongside the likes of Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman and Liam Neeson.

“I just remember getting there, I was 23, brand new,” she said. ‘Like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe everyone is here.”

She then recalled how everyone was present apart from the women Colin Frissell (Kris Marshall) meets in America, played by January Jones, Ivana Milicevic and Elisha Cuthbert.

“I was sat there terrified and I remember [writer and director Richard Curtis] said that the American girls aren’t here today,” Page recalled.

Curtis then suggested that Page could read in for them, sending the Welsh actor into a state of panic.

“Should I do it American? Should I do it Welsh?” she questioned, before attempting to deliver the lines in an American accent.

“Richard said, ‘That is the oddest American accent I’ve ever heard,’” Page said. “I kept thinking, ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this in front of Liam Neeson.’”

The cast of Love Actually recently reunited for a TV special presented by Diane Sawyer.

With the film facing its annual surge in interest – and sparking new discourse and debates – actor Martine McCutcheon said last week that the non-“PC” moments in the film are what make it popular.

“I think, honestly, it was 20 years ago, and the world has changed a lot, but I also think that part of the charm of the film was the fact that some of the love stories and the characters weren’t perfect,” she said.