Colin Firth's real-life Love Actually storyline as ex Livia opens up about their split

The 2003 British rom-com Love Actually is widely praised as one of the most popular films to date, but one storyline that had viewers hooked involved Colin Firth falling in love with his housekeeper, Aurélia.

After finding out his girlfriend had been having an affair with his own brother, Colin's character Jamie flees to France to finish writing his novel. His relationship with Aurélia blossoms despite their inability to communicate, and he ends up returning to France on Christmas Eve to propose to her in Portuguese. In real life, Colin Firth experienced a similar situation when his ex-wife Livia Guiggioli had an affair with Italian journalist Marco Brancaccia.

The pair first met when Livia was 25 and working as a production assistant on the set of Nostromo. A year after their first meeting, Colin and Livia tied the knot.

The former couple welcomed two sons-Luca, 24, and Matteo, 22-and briefly split in 2015. However, their formal divorce wasn't finalised until 2019, and Livia is now in a relationship with Scotsman Callum Grieve. Firth has been seeing TV writer Maggie Cohn since 2022.

Speaking to Hello! Magazine in an exclusive interview, Livia opened up about her life since splitting from Firth and noted that she "doesn't miss the limelight."

"I don't miss any of it. Sometimes I look at my incredible high heels, gowns and clutches and think, I will never wear them again, and I can't remember who that person was," she said.

"I've had so many lives; I was producing documentaries, then I married this English man who became a famous actor, and we grew a family," she added. "Then we happened to be at the Oscars, meeting all these crazy people. It's funny how each moment of your life, at the time, becomes your reality."

Livia also said that despite the split, her and Colin remain close friends, "Colin and I have a wonderful relationship. We have worked on that a lot, and in keeping the family together. I have a partner; he has a partner and we're all together all the time. It's an extended, crazy family."