Love of Your Life Filming Locations and Cast Guide

Love of Your Life follows Maya through almost a decade of romance, grief and reinvention, and director Rachel Morrison makes the changing places around her part of that journey. Margaret Qualley leads the Amazon MGM Studios drama as Maya, a Boston emergency room nurse whose chance meeting with Charlie, played by Gabriel Basso, opens her up to a future she never expected. When that future changes abruptly, Maya begins moving through new cities, relationships and versions of herself.

The romantic drama was written by Julia Cox and produced by Ryan Gosling and Jessie Henderson. It opened in select US theaters on October 7, 2026, before its Prime Video release on October 14. Rather than recreating Maya’s travels primarily on stages, Morrison wanted the places around her to feel tangible. Production moved through Boston, Portugal, London and New Orleans, while the cast around Qualley includes Aaron Pierre, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Catherine Keener, Tamara Lawrance and Corey Johnson.

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Where was Love of Your Life filmed?

Love of Your Life was filmed across the United States and Europe, with production working in Boston, New Orleans, London and Portugal. Portuguese filming included both Lisbon and the Algarve, while Massachusetts production records confirm that part of the movie was made in the Boston area. Production listings place principal photography between August and late October 2025, although individual production records differ slightly on the exact final shooting date.

The international schedule was a creative choice rather than simply a way of making Maya’s travels look bigger. Morrison explained that she wanted each city to have its own personality and to reflect a different period in Maya’s emotional life. Boston is familiar and grounded, Portugal is bright and expansive even when Maya cannot fully appreciate its beauty, London feels sharper and more controlled, while New Orleans develops a warmer and more sensual visual texture.

Boston, Massachusetts

Boston is Maya’s home and the place where the film establishes the life she believes she understands. She works as an ER nurse there and meets Charlie, an MIT researcher whose openness gradually breaks through her guarded personality. The Massachusetts Film Office confirms that Love of Your Life was partially filmed in the state in 2025.

Morrison has spoken specifically about Boston’s unpredictable weather becoming part of the movie. One scene in which Charlie asks Maya out was filmed in strong natural wind, and the director decided to embrace what the location was giving them instead of trying to control it. That approach is visible throughout the film, where the production favors real streets and changing weather over backgrounds that feel overly polished.

Promotional material shows Maya moving through Boston’s brownstone-lined neighborhoods, giving the early part of the film a more intimate scale than the locations that come later. The available production material confirms Boston filming but does not provide a reliable public list of individual houses or hospital addresses, so those should not be assigned to specific properties without stronger evidence.

Lisbon and the Algarve, Portugal

Portugal supplies some of the movie’s most visually distinctive locations. After Maya’s life in Boston changes, Lisbon becomes part of her attempt to exist outside the future she once imagined for herself. The movie uses the capital’s hills, streets, yellow trams and views toward the Tagus rather than disguising Lisbon as another city. Portuguese coverage of the trailer specifically noted that Lisbon itself is part of Maya’s journey.

The production also moved south into the Algarve. Morrison and Qualley have both discussed the Portuguese shoot, with Qualley singling out the swimming sequences as one of her favorite experiences while making the film. The contrast between Maya’s emotional isolation and the bright coastline around her was deliberate. Morrison wanted Portugal to remain beautiful even when Maya was unable to fully connect with that beauty.

Filming-location matching has identified Largo da Republica and the Marinha Beach area among the places visible in the completed movie. These identifications fit the broader confirmed Lisbon and Algarve shoot, although the production itself has not published an official scene-by-scene location list.

Portugal is also where Maya encounters Felix, giving the location a narrative purpose beyond providing attractive travel imagery. By moving her so far from Boston, the film creates enough distance for Maya to imagine becoming someone who is not defined entirely by what happened there.

London, England

London represents another stage in Maya’s changing life. Production records include the British capital among the film’s international locations, while Morrison has described London as having a cleaner, more modern visual quality than the warmer textures of Portugal and New Orleans.

One recognizable London location in the finished movie is Sessions Arts Club at 24 Clerkenwell Green. The restaurant and private club occupies the historic former Middlesex Sessions House, giving the sequence a grand interior that feels very different from Maya’s Boston world and Portugal’s outdoor landscapes. Filming-location databases have matched the building to scenes in Love of Your Life.

The London material is another example of why Morrison favored real places. Instead of creating every stage of Maya’s travels on a controlled set, the changing architecture and natural light help tell viewers where she is emotionally before the dialogue has to explain it.

New Orleans, Louisiana

The production reached New Orleans near the end of filming, with local casting records confirming work in the city from October 22 through October 24, 2025. A stand-in was specifically sought for Maya for all three days, confirming Margaret Qualley’s part of the New Orleans unit.

The finished movie makes use of the Bywater area’s colorful houses and more humid visual atmosphere. Morrison has described New Orleans as having a wet, dewy quality, which deliberately separates this stage of Maya’s journey from the cities that came earlier. The location appears at a point when Maya herself has changed, so the warmer environment feels connected to where the character has arrived emotionally.

The Columns Hotel on St. Charles Avenue has also been identified among the New Orleans filming sites. Built as a residence in the 19th century, the property retains the large porches and period architecture associated with the city’s older neighborhoods. Location reporting places the Love of Your Life production there during its brief Louisiana shoot.

Love of Your Life cast guide

The locations change repeatedly, but Margaret Qualley remains at the center of almost every stage of the movie. Morrison designed the supporting cast so the important people Maya meets would not simply feel like interchangeable romantic interests. Charlie, Felix and Jason represent very different relationships, while Catherine Keener’s Ruth ties Maya back to a part of her past she cannot simply leave behind.

Margaret Qualley as Maya

Margaret Qualley plays Maya, a Boston ER nurse who begins the story more comfortable caring for other people than building a life outside her work. Meeting Charlie changes that. Their relationship pushes her toward ideas about love, marriage and family that she had previously kept at a distance.

Qualley has described the role as encompassing several distinct versions of the same woman, from falling in love to surviving a profound loss and eventually learning how to live without treating moving forward as a betrayal of what came before. She also spoke with real emergency room nurses who had worked through the COVID period as part of her preparation for Maya.

Qualley is known for Maid, The Substance, Poor Things and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Love of Your Life gives her a much more grounded contemporary role, with the film depending heavily on the small changes in Maya across several years rather than one dramatic transformation.

Gabriel Basso as Charlie

Gabriel Basso plays Charlie, the graduate student Maya meets in Boston. Morrison wanted Charlie to have an energy that could genuinely disarm Maya, and his warmth becomes the foundation for the future she begins imagining. The film’s official synopsis places their chance encounter at the beginning of everything that follows.

Basso is best known for playing Peter Sutherland in Netflix’s The Night Agent, along with earlier roles in Super 8 and The Big C. Here, he plays considerably further away from the controlled action-hero persona associated with his recent work.

Charlie is also the character who gives the title its first meaning. Love of Your Life initially encourages viewers to think the phrase refers to one person, before Maya’s later journey complicates that idea.

Aaron Pierre as Felix

Aaron Pierre plays Felix, a British single father whom Maya encounters after leaving the life she knew in Boston. Felix arrives when she is trying to live without permanent attachments, making their relationship very different from the immediate intensity she once shared with Charlie.

Morrison has said that Pierre brought an elegance to Felix that distinguished him from the film’s other major male characters. Rather than presenting him as a simple replacement for Charlie, the movie uses Felix to test whether Maya can allow another person into a life she has deliberately made temporary.

Pierre’s recent credits include Rebel Ridge, Mufasa: The Lion King and HBO’s Lanterns, making Love of Your Life another very different showcase for the actor.

Patrick Schwarzenegger as Jason

Patrick Schwarzenegger plays Jason, Maya’s longtime best friend from college. His familiarity with her separates him immediately from Charlie and Felix. Jason knows versions of Maya that existed before either romance, giving their relationship a history the movie does not have to manufacture through a chance meeting.

Morrison has said Schwarzenegger’s natural warmth helped her see him as Jason despite the actor coming off a very different performance in The White Lotus. That sense of someone Maya has known for years is important because Jason represents a connection she cannot escape simply by changing countries. Schwarzenegger’s other credits include The Staircase, Gen V and The White Lotus.

Catherine Keener as Ruth

Catherine Keener plays Ruth, Charlie’s mother. She occupies a different place in Maya’s story from the movie’s romantic characters because both women are connected through Charlie, but they do not always experience that connection in the same way.

Their relationship becomes complicated as the story moves forward, giving Keener some of the movie’s most emotionally difficult material opposite Qualley. Publicity for the film specifically identifies Ruth as Charlie’s mother and describes her relationship with Maya as significant to the later stages of Maya’s journey.

Keener brings a long screen career that includes Being John Malkovich, Capote, Get Out and The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Her presence helps give Maya’s history with Charlie weight even when Maya is physically thousands of miles away from Boston.

Tamara Lawrance and Corey Johnson are also part of the supporting ensemble, while the wider cast includes performers working across Maya’s international journey. Amazon MGM Studios’ principal cast listing centers Qualley, Schwarzenegger, Basso, Pierre and Keener, with the movie ultimately using each relationship to explore a different version of love rather than treating the story as a conventional choice between romantic partners.

Love of Your Life was made with the unusual advantage of allowing its emotional geography to be real geography. Boston, Lisbon, the Algarve, London and New Orleans are not simply postcards Maya passes through. Morrison uses each place to mark where Maya is in her life, while Qualley and the supporting cast give those changes a human center. The result is a romance whose locations and characters are doing the same work: showing that a life can contain more than one kind of love without making what came before any less important.