Love Actually cast open up about Billy Bob Thornton's bizarre phobias

Actor Billy Bob Thornton. Photo / Getty

It's one of the most romantic feel-good movies of all time, but filming Love Actually wasn't all fun and games for Billy Bob Thornton.

The 61-year-old actor, who played the US President in the 2003 movie, has some bizarre phobias, which the cast took great delight in making him confront on set.

"Billy Bob Thornton hates antiques, and Hugh [Grant] was constantly pointing at pieces that were 500 years old," Martine McCutcheon said to Entertainment Weekly.

"And Billy Bob was going [in his Southern accent], 'Oh my Gahd, Hugh, I dun't laake this.'"

Thornton spoke about his odd fear of antique furniture to the New York Times in 2012.

"I don't mind a chair," he said.

"I can go as far back as you want with Asia or Mexico. It's that French/English/Scottish old mildewy stuff. Old dusty heavy drapes and big tables with lions' heads carved in it. Stuff that kings were around. That's the stuff I can't be around. It was too big to be functional. It creeps me out."

But it wasn't just antique furniture that Thornton had a fear of on the set of Love Actually, according to the film's director, Richard Curtis.

"The most fun thing was that one of Billy Bob's oddest phobias was towards [British prime minister] Benjamin Disraeli's facial hair," he said to EW.

"Obviously, this is the only movie in history where he'd have to walk past a picture of Benjamin Disraeli. So I told him, 'Bad news, Billy Bob.'"

Hugh Grant took great delight in freaking Thornton out with the photo, saying, "I used to come up and just push it in front of Billy Bob and he would break out in a sweat."

Thornton explained his phobia of the former British Prime Minister to Empire magazine in 2007.

"I was watching some old movie once ... but Benjamin Disraeli was a character in it," he said.

Benjamin Disraeli - Earl of Beaconsfield. British Conservative statesman and literary figure. Photo / Getty

"He was in this old, weird room, with old heavy drapes and there was just something about his hair. I thought, 'God knows what's going on with that hair.' I don't know what it was, maybe some food accidentally got in there somehow. There was something about the way it swept out ... I couldn't breathe too well."