Goldeneye, 1995
Director
Cast
- Pierce Brosnan
- Sean Bean
- Judi Dench
- Izabella Scorupco
- Famke Janssen
- Alan Cumming
- Desmond Llewelyn
- Joe Don Baker
- Minnie Driver
- Charles Dance
visit the film locations
London: Flights: Heathrow Airport; Gatwick Airport
Langham Hotel, 1c Portland Place, Regent Street, London, W1B 1JA (tel: 020.7636.1000)
Monaco: Visit Monaco
St Petersburg: Tourism
Puerto Rico: Arecibo
Arecibo Observatory, Puerto Rico
Trivia
Somerset House becomes the 'Ministry of Defence' in the next Bond movie, Tomorrow Never Dies. It's also seen in Wilde, Sleepy Hollow, Shanghai Knights and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.
Brompton Cemetery is featured in Afraid of the Dark, The Wings of the Dove, Bond-spoof Johnny English and Eastern Promises.
GoldenEye location: Xenia Onatopp steals the sooper-dooper ’copter: Monte Carlo Bay, Monaco
The increasingly moribund Bond series was on the verge of retirement when it got a new lease of life with Pierce Brosnan.
The opening teaser, Bond’s spectacular bungee jump, at the ‘Arkangel Chemical Weapons Facility – USSR’, is actually the Tusker Dam, Lake Verzasca, at Hittnau in Switzerland.
GoldenEye location: Bond arrives at the casino: Casino de Monte Carlo, Monte carlo, Monaco
Bond’s race with Xenia Onatopp (Famke Janssen), supposedly in the hills above Monte Carlo, uses the mountain roads around Thorenc, about 20 miles north of Grasse, way to the northwest. Nevertheless, Bond arrives at the Casino de Monte Carlo, Monaco, and it’s from the bay at Monte Carlo that Onatopp steals the Stealth helicopter.
M’s office is, finally, MI6’s real HQ, Vauxhall Cross, the spanking new building at 85 Albert Embankment on the Thames by Vauxhall Bridge. It turns up again, at the start of the river chase in The World Is Not Enough, and Pierce Brosnan turns up at the HQ as a somewhat shabbier, seedier agent in John Boorman’s film of John Le Carre’s The Tailor of Panama.
GoldenEye location: Bond in Russia: Palace Square, St Petersburg
Although there is some real filming in St Petersburg in Russia, much of the tank chase was filmed on a massive set, built at the old Rolls Royce aircraft plant in Leavesden, Hertfordshire, which has since, of course, been developed to become the vast Leavesden Studio, home of the Harry Potter films and the Warner Bros Studio Tour.
Many of the other ‘Russian’ locations were filmed around the southeast of England: ‘St Petersburg Airport’, where Bond is met by Jack Wade (Joe Don Baker), is actually the Queen’s Stand, Epsom Racecourse, Epsom, Surrey.
GoldenEye location: The ‘Grand Hotel Europe’: Langham Hotel, Portland Place, London W1
Despite those Russian flags, the ‘Grand Hotel Europe’ is the Langham Hotel, 1c Portland Place W1, at the top of Regent Street opposite the BBC’s Broadcasting House.
GoldenEye location: The ‘St Petersburg’ square: Somerset House, The Strand, London
The 'St Petersburg' square, where Wade uses a sledgehammer to fix his motor, is the courtyard of the recently restored Somerset House on the Strand – which later became the ‘Ministry of Defence’ in Tomorrow Never Dies. This popular filming location can also be seen in Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow (as turn-of-the-century Manhattan), as the exterior of ‘Devonshire House’ in historical biopic The Duchess, with Keira Knightley; Billy Wilder’s superb The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (as the ‘Diogenes Club’ where Holmes meets his older brother Mycroft (Christopher Lee); in Shanghai Knights (where Jackie Chan invents the kung fu movie at the end of the film); and even as ‘Beverly Hills’ in Bride And Prejudice.
GoldenEye location: The interior of the ‘Russian’ church: St Sofia, Moscow Road, Bayswater, London W2
The interior of the ‘Russian’ church is St Sofia’s Greek Cathedral, Moscow Road, Bayswater, W2, seen previously as the Russian church in which Tchaikovsky marries Nina in Ken Russell’s biopic of the composer, The Music Lovers and also in Matthew Vaughn’s fantasy Stardust.
GoldenEye location: The ‘Russian’ church: Brompton Cemetery, Earls Court, London
The exterior is the rear (Fulham Road side) of the 1839 chapel in Brompton Cemetery, Old Brompton Road, Earl’s Court, SW5. You might recognise this as the cemetery where Rowan Atkinson disrupts the funeral in Bond spoof Johnny English. This extravagantly Victorian graveyard also features in arty horror pic Afraid Of The Dark, Iain Softley’s Henry James adaptation The Wings of the Doveand bittersweet romantic comedy Jack and Sarah, with Richard E Grant. More recently it was the scene of a brutal murder in David Cronenberg’s sinister Eastern Promises, and of Lord Blackwood’s mysterious resurrection from the ‘Blackwood family vault’ in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes.
GoldenEye location: The ‘St Petersburg’ council chamber: Draper’s Hall, Throgmorton Street, London EC2
The ‘St Petersburg’ council chamber, where General Ourumov learns that Natalya (Izabella Scorupco) has survived the GoldenEye detonation, is the grandiose architecture of Draper’s Hall, Throgmorton Street, EC2 in the City of London (which also became ‘Russia’ for the Val Kilmer version of The Saint).
The railway scenes were filmed on the Nene Valley Railway, Peterborough.
The massive radio telescope dish is the Arecibo Observatory, Puerto Rico, seen also in Robert Zemeckis’ Contact, with Jodie Foster.
