Notting Hill, 1999
Director
Cast
- Hugh Grant
- Julia Roberts
- Rhys Ifans
- Alec Baldwin
- Gina McKee
- Tim McInnerny
- Richard McCabe
- Emily Mortimer
- John Shrapnel
visit the film locations
London: Flights: Heathrow Airport; Gatwick Airport
If you’re following in the footsteps of movie star Anna Scott, it’s not going to be a budget trip:
Eat in style at: the Metropolitan Hotel, Old Park Lane, W1 (tel: 020.7447.4747) – houses Nobu restaurant
Stay at: the Ritz Hotel, 150 Piccadilly, W1 (tel: 020.7493.8181)
Savoy Hotel, 1 Savoy Hill, on the Strand (currently closed for refurbishment)
Stay in relaxingly minimal surroundings at: The Hempel, 31-35 Craven Hill Gardens, W2 (tel: 020.7298.9000)– or just peek at the (private) 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)
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 Line)
Trivia
There's no shortage of British romcoms: Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bridget Jones's Diary and Love Actually
For a different view of Notting Hill, take a look at Michael Winner's 1963 West 11, the trippy classic Performance, the grim account of serial killer Christie 10 Rillington Place or Hanif Kureishi's London Kills Me
Notting Hill location: Hugh Grant’s ‘travel bookshop’: Gong, Portobello Road, Notting Hill, London W11
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 you’ll 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.
Notting Hill location: the guy who got the ‘I love Ken’ tattoo: Saints Tattoo Parlour, 201 Portobello Road, Notting Hill, London W11
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, just off Portobello.
Notting Hill location: William Thacker bumps into Anna Scott on the corner: Westbourne Park Road at Portobello Road, Notting Hill, London W11
Coffee Shop, which stood at 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 – a branch of Coffee Republic.
Notting Hill location: William Thacker's flat, the ‘blue door’ – when it was blue: 280 Westbourne Park Road, Notting Hill, London W11
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 (not to say successful) 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.
Notting Hill location: William watches sci-fi movie Helix: Coronet Cine0ma, 103 Notting Hill Gate
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.
Notting Hill location: William and Anna enjoy a meal at the Japanese restaurant: Nobu, Metropolitan Hotel, Old Park Lane, London W1
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.
Notting Hill location: the failed restaurant of William’s friend, Tony: Portfolio, on the corner of Golborne Road and Bevington Road, London W10
At the other end of the scale, the failed restaurant of William’s 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 Dourif’s diner in a film which took a totally different look at the area, writer Hanif Kureishi’s directorial debut London Kills Me.
Notting Hill location: the birthday party: 91 Lansdowne Road, Notting Hill, London W11
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.
Notting Hill location: sneaking into the communal gardens: Rosmead Gardens, Rosmead Road, London W11
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.
Notting Hill location: Anna Scott stays at the Ritz Hotel, Piccadilly, London
And outside Notting Hill itself, there’s 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.
Notting Hill location: the period movie shoot: Kenwood House, Hampstead, London NW3
The site of the Henry James period movie shoot is Kenwood House, Hampstead Lane, NW3, on Hampstead Heath, north London. 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 Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park it appears as ‘Southerton’.
Notting Hill location: William proposes at the press conference: Savoy Hotel, 1 Savoy Hill, the Strand, London WC2
William publicly proposes at Anna Scott's’ 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, Entrapment and more recently as the hotel of Nicolas Cage in National Treasure: Book of Secrets.
Notting Hill location: the wedding reception: Zen Garden, Hempel, Craven Hill Gardens, Bayswater, London W2
This is the movies, so naturally, Anna Scott accepts. The outdoors wedding reception is held in the beautiful Zen Garden of designer Anouska Hempel’s minimalist The Hempel, 31-35 Craven Hill Gardens, W2 (it’s opposite the hotel entrance) in Bayswater.
Notting Hill location: the movie premiere: Empire, Leicester Square, London
The final movie première is held at the UCI Empire Leicester Square, 5-6 Leicester Square.