Jude Law has revealed his “one big issue” with his 2006 festive classic The Holiday.

In Nancy Meyers’s romantic comedy, Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz play two singletons who swap homes for the holiday season, with Winslet’s Iris moving to Los Angeles while Diaz’s Amanda lives in her quaint English cottage.

Law, who plays Iris’s brother and Amanda’s love interest Graham, admitted on the Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard podcast that he asked Meyers to change his character’s name because he didn’t like it.

“My one big issue with it was the name Graham. I apologise to everyone called Graham out there. But in the U.K., Graham’s a little bit of a…,” he said, not finishing his sentence out of fear of offending Grahams.

“I was like, ‘Can we just call him Jack or John?’ And Nancy just really wanted Graham. Because you see, at least in the States, you (pronounce) it, ‘Gram,’ but in England, we call it, ‘Gray-um.'”

Reflecting on the longevity of the film, The Talented Mr. Ripley star shared that he had a feeling it would do well when it opened in cinemas, but he had no idea it would still be a festive favourite 18 years later.

“Nancy Meyers, the director, has a really forensic, sharp eye for creating those cute-meet (meet-cute), sweet but not saccharine movies. They satisfy, from the aesthetic to the dialogue, there’s just enough humour, there’s a little romance, they’re smart, but she goes about them with a real attention to detail,” he praised. “So you hope that it’s going to be a success when it opens, you do not think it’s going to become a stalwart for decades. A Christmas routine…(it’s) so popular and they make it a part of their Christmas, it’s a lovely thing.”

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