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Notting
Hill film location: Hugh Grant's ‘travel bookshop’: Gong, Portobello
Road, Notting Hill
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NOTTING HILL
filming locations
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CREDITS
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“What's
the pay like in movies? I mean, last movie – how
much did you get paid?”
“Fifteen million dollars.”
The team behind Four Weddings
and a Funeral follows up with another Transatlantic
romance as mega-movie star Anna Scott (Julia
Roberts) falls for mild-mannered English bookseller
William Thacker (Hugh
Grant).
The title is the setting, though the famously cosmopolitan
locale – site of race riots in the fifties –
seems to have been ethnically cleansed: this is the
whitest Notting Hill youíll ever see.
In the fifties, this was bedsit-land – cheap, rundown
accommodation for the largely West Indian immigrants,
and became the site of notorious race riots when locals
clashed with racist Teddy Boys.
It was the setting for 'issue' movies such as Bryan
Forbes' The L-Shaped Room
(abortion, racism, prostitution...) in 1962, before
the street market of Portobello
Road became a staple of Swinging Sixties
movies in films such as The
Italian Job (Michael
Caine's pad was just off the northern end of the
road) and comedy spy thriller Otley. Caine also
lived nearby as Cockney womaniser Alfie,
and burned-out rockstar Mick
Jagger retreated here in Nicolas
Roeg-Donald
Cammell's landmark Performance at the end of the decade.
The heart of the film is Notting
Hill's Portobello
Road street market, in the top ten of London's
tourist attractions – a fact you'll appreciate
if you visit at the weekend. But that really is the
time to see it. On weekdays, locals buy fruit and veg
here. Second-hand goods are included on on Friday but
on Saturdays the road is packed for the famous antiques
market. Begun in the 1860s, it's been busy ever since,
becoming – along with Carnaby Street and the King's
Road, Chelsea, one of the centres of the Swinging London
phenomenon in the 60s. Sometimes on Portobello it feels
like the 60s never went away.
But there is no ‘Travel Book Company’ on Portobello
Road, the down-at-heel shop owned by William
Thacker. The store was Nicholls Antique Arcade, now
furniture store Gong, 142 Portobello
Road. The real Travel Bookshop, on which
William’s establishment was based, can be seen
around the corner. It's The
Travel Bookshop, 13-15 Blenheim Crescent (tel:
020.7229.5260).
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Notting
Hill film location: William Thacker bumps into Anna Scott on the corner: Westbourne Park Road at Portobello Road |
Coffee Shop, 303 Westbourne
Park Road, was the little, yes, coffee shop,
where William gets the coffee and orange juice at the
beginning of the film. It’s since closed down. Next door, on the corner of Westbourne
Park and Portobello Road, was the empty property
outside which he bumps into Anna Scott. And it’s
now – Coffee Republic.
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Notting
Hill film location: William Thacker's flat, the ‘blue
door’ – when it was blue |
A few yards away across Portobello Road, at 280
Westbourne Park Road is William Thacker's
flat. The rundown bedsit interior was a studio set and
bore no resemblance whatsoever to what actually lay
behind the famous blue door, for this was actually home
to the screenwriter Richard
Curtis. Rather than the homely mess of a flat which
confronted Anna Scott, the converted chapel boasted
a courtyard garden, a 1,000-square-foot reception room
and a galleried mezzanine. Shortly after filming it
was put on the market for £1.3 million, which
must make Notting Hill
the most expensive real estate ad ever. The blue door,
since removed and auctioned off for charity, has now
been replaced by a rather anonymous black one.
Saints Tattoo Parlour, 201
Portobello Road, is the store from which
the guy who got drunk and now can’t remember why
he chose a tattoo reading ‘I love Ken’ emerges,
under the opening credits. It’s also the ‘Brighton’
tattoo parlour peeked into by Bella (Lia Williams) in Michael Winner’s
film of Helen Zahavi’s Dirty
Weekend.
The Coronet Cinema, 103 Notting
Hill Gate is where William watches Helix,
the sci-fi movie short on both horses and hounds, starring
Anna Scott The scene where he watches a film in swimming
goggles was shot in the screening room of BAFTA.
Afterwards William and Anna enjoy a meal at Nobu,
19 Old Park Lane, the dizzyingly expensive
Japanese restaurant of the Metropolitan
Hotel, Old Park Lane, W1.
At the other end of the scale, the failed restaurant
of Williamís friend, Tony (Richard
McCabe), is Portfolio,
an art store on the corner of Golborne
Road and Bevington Road, W10 at the northern
reach of Portobello Road market. Previously an art gallery, it also became an
eaterie ‚ Brad Dourifís diner ‚ in a film which took
a totally different look at the area, writer Hanif Kureishiís
directorial debut London Kills
Me.
91 Lansdowne Road
is the home of Bella and Max (Gina
McKee and Tim
McInnerny), where William surprises everyone with
his megastar date at the birthday party. The private
communal gardens, into which Anna and William break
at night (“Whoops a daisy!”), is Rosmead
Gardens, Rosmead Road, W11. Don't even think
about it – it's a fiercely private garden, and
the drop from the fence is nastier than it appears on
film.
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Notting
Hill film location: Anna Scott stays at the Ritz Hotel, Piccadilly |
And outside Notting Hill,
thereís no shortage of London landmarks to seduce the US tourist dollar.
Anna Scott stays at the Ritz
Hotel, 150 Piccadilly, W1, an establishment
which rarely permits filming inside, but on this occasion
gave unprecedented co-operation to the film company.
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Notting
Hill film location: the period movie shoot: Kenwood House, Hampstead |
The site of her Henry James movie is Kenwood
House, Hampstead Lane, NW3,
on Hampstead Heath.
The Adam mansion, once home to Lord Mansfield, holds
the Iveagh Bequest of old master paintings, and, amazingly,
entry is free. The house crops up in another Roger Michell movie – again as a period movie set – in Venus, for which Peter O'Toole was Oscar nominated. In Patricia Rozema's 1999 film of Mansfield Park it appears as ‘Southerton’.
William publicly proposes at Anna Scott'sí press conference,
in the Lancaster Room of the Savoy
Hotel, 1 Savoy Hill, on the Strand. The Savoy was also
featured in The French
Lieutenant's Woman, The
Long Good Friday and Entrapment.
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Notting
Hill film location: the wedding reception: Zen Garden, Hempel,
Craven Hill gardens, Bayswater |
This is the movies, so naturally, Anna Scott accepts.
The outdoors wedding reception is held in the beautiful
Zen Garden of designer
Anouska Hempelís minimalist The
Hempel, 31-35 Craven Hill Gardens, W2 (itís
opposite the hotel entrance) in Bayswater,
and the movie premiËre is held at the UCI
Empire Leicester Square, 5-6 Leicester Square
(tel: 0870.010.2030)
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FILMING
LOCATIONS FOR NOTTING HILL
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TRAVEL
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London:
Flights: Heathrow
Airport; Gatwick
Airport
This is not a budget trip. It's only the best for
William and Anna:
Metropolitan
Hotel, Old Park Lane, W1 (tel: 020.7447.4747)
– houses Nobu
restaurant
Ritz
Hotel, 150 Piccadilly, W1 (tel: 020.7493.8181)
Savoy
Hotel, 1 Savoy Hill, on the Strand
(tel: 020.7836.4343)
The
Hempel, 31-35 Craven Hill Gardens, W2 (tel:
020.7298.9000). You can see the Zen Garden across
the road from the hotel entrance
If that's a little beyond your means, you could have
the chance to pick up a bargain (though you need to
be up pretty early to beat the professional dealers)
on Portobello Road Market
(tube: Notting Hill Gate, Circle District and Central
Lines)
Or pick up a copy of The
Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations at The
Travel Bookshop, 13-15 Blenheim Crescent (tel:
020.7229.5260)
Or simply catch a film in Notting Hill at the Coronet
Cinema, 103 Notting Hill Gate (tel:
020.7727.6705) (tube: Notting Hill Gate, Circle
District and Central Lines), or in the West End,
at UCI
Empire Leicester Square, 5-6 Leicester Square
(tel: 0870.010.2030) (tube: Leicester Square,
Piccadilly and Northern Lines)
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ASSOCIATED
FILMS |
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