Over the years, picking apart the plot holes in Love Actually has become as much of a tradition as eating turkey, drinking gallons of wine and playing charades with distant relatives.
And while this revelation about Richard Curtis's festive rom-com isn't exactly a plot hole, it has left fans reeling all the same - it turns out actors Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Keira Knightley had an age gap of just FIVE YEARS at the time of filming. Knightley was just 18 at the time of filming, while Brodie-Sangster was 13.
At this stage you may be wondering why that's a big deal. Well... bear with me here.
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Twitter user Madeleine Lloyd-James posted side-by-side movie stills of both Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Keira Knightley, who starred as a lovestruck schoolkid and a newly-wed woman, respectively.
On-screen there's an evident disparity between the ages of the two characters, and yet Madeleine's tweet points out that the real-life age gap was not quite so dramatic.
She wrote: "Yearly reminder that there is only a five year age gap between Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Keira Knightley in Love Actually."
Think back to the film. Knightley's Juliet is a married woman to mature-looking husband Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor), and they've been together long enough for the latter's best pal Mark (Andrew Lincoln) to fall in love with her. Not creepy at all.
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Then you've got Brodie-Sangster's Sam, a kid who looks around ten years old and is in love with his classmate despite having never spoken to her. Again, not creepy at all.
Although the small age gap between the two is not quite as startling now - Brodie-Sangster is now 29 while Knightly is 34 - in the twisted world of Love Actually it's pretty hard to believe.
And the online community totally agrees. The tweet has since garnered over 19,000 shares, nearly 110,000 likes and a whole host of comments.
One user wrote: "He looks five and she looks 25!" while another added: "I just looked this up because I was 100 percent certain this was false. I researched it and now I think that you have rigged the internet to lie to me."
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Some people took the opportunity to point out some other troubling statistics about the movie, with one person posting: "Just did a quick Wiki. She'd have been, what, 17 or 18 at the time? And was getting married to a bloke in his late 20s. Yikes. As if that film didn't have enough problems in my mind. That's another for the pile."
Crazy stuff, hey? At least you can use this as an excuse to go and watch Love Actually for the billionth time. For research purposes, obviously.
Featured Image Credit: Universal PicturesTopics: Christmas, TV and Film