Twickenham & Croydon

There was a great deal of cinematic activity especially near the river Thames which cuts Richmond and Twickenham, with the studios of St. Margaret's handy nearby.


Twickenhame Bridge

In The Wild Geese (1978) Stewart Granger arranges for the contract out on Roger Moore to be lifted on Ranelagh Drive by Richmond Lock.

In Hysteria (1965) Robert Webber spots schemer Leila Goldoni parked on Ranelagh Drive as he walks across Twickenham Bridge. In All the Little Animals (1998) Christian Bale crosses the bridge and is picked up by travellers soon after.In Dead Fish (2004) Jimi Mistry hitches a ride for Amsterdam on the bridge. In Baby Love (1968) Linda Hayden is trouble by visions of her dead mother Diana Dors. Donald Sutherland looks for clues under Twickenham railway bridge on the Richmond side in Murder By Decree (1979).

Roger Moore drives off Richmond Bridge at the end of The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970). Adrain Pasdar crosses the bridge to rent a room at Julie Walters' house in Just Like A Woman (1992).

The Beatles' movie Help! (1965) opens with The Beatles entering 5, 7, 9 and 11 Ailsa Avenue. Paul McCartney meets Leo McKern and Eleanor Bron outside. Ringo Starr mucks up all the bar games in The Turk's Head, Winchester Road, and, when leaving by the St. Margaret's Grove exit, is noticed by a policeman in A Hard Day's Night (1964). Ringo Starr wanders by the river on Kreisel Walk during the film. The east end of Brentford Ait and Kew Bridge can be glimpsed in the background.

Just beyond the pub and Winchester Hall is St. Stephen's C.E. Junior School where Anthony Hopkins sets up his base in Juggernaut (1974).

At St. Margaret's Station Millicent Martin meets her husband after an evening with Alfie (1966).

Tom Baker arrives back from the tropics at the station and crosses St. Margaret's Road by the pedestrian crossing, still there, in Vault Of Horror (1973).

Lambert Wilson and Anna Galienna live at Ferryside, Riverside in The Leading Man (1995).

Whitton

The film Shirley Valentine (1989) was shot on location in Liverpool, Twickenham, Oxford Circus, Bloomsbury, and St. Pancras Station in London, and on the island of Mykonos in Greece. Pauline Collins stas as Shirley Valentine who lives at 67 Strathearn Avenue, Whitton, while neighbour Julia McKenzie lives opposite at 58 Strathearn Avenue, both houses at the corner of Ryecroft Avenue. This is supposedly a Liverpudlian suburb. Prior to the opening shots and with steak in the shopping bag, Shirley heads to feed Claymore. Ryecroft Avenue at the junction with Strathearn Avenue, Twickenham. When she visits her son, she finds him in Grimsby Street, London.


Shirley and her friend Jane (Alison Steadman) have lunch together at Littlewoods' Oxford Circus department store on Oxford Street, London. The travel agency where they pick up their tickets is Thomas Cook Travel, Heath Road, Twickenham. Shirley gets her passport photos taken in a booth at St Pancras station on Euston Road. While reminiscing about her schooldays, in a flashback we see a young Shirley Valentine (Gillian Kearney) at school. This is Waldegrave school for girls, Fifth Cross Road, Twickenham. Shirley remembers a young Marjorie Majors (Catharine Duncan) who was the bright girl of the class.

Back in the present, Shirley remembers being splashed by a Rolls Royce as it passesat the corner of Great Russell Street and Bloomsbury Street, London. The Rolls Royce Phantom VI stops a few metres away outside the Marlborough Hotel on Bloomsbury Street, London (presently named The Bloomsbury Street Hotel). Out steps a grown up Marjorie Majors (Joanna Lumley) and the two are re-united. On her way home, walking in the rain, Shirley ponders about her life married to Joe walking along Crown Road, St. Margarets, Twickenham.

Osterley

Off Jersey Road, Osterley Park's neo-classical mansion is Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr's stately pile in The Grass Is Greener (1960). It is Barry Jones' in A Study In Terror (1965) where John Neville and Donald Houston as Holmes and Watson investigate the Jack The Ripper murders.

Dirk Bogarde visits Susannah York at Butterfield House, 63 Church Street, next to the church close to Isleworth Ait at the end of Sebastian (1968). The residence has moved upmarket with a more ornate roof and is no longer split into two.

Hounslow and Heston

Keira Knightley and Parminder Nagra go to Hounslow tube for their West End shopping trip in Bend It Like Beckham (2002). Parminder Nagra lives with her family at 33 Sutton Square, Heston. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Anupam Kher enjoy a game of cricket on the green outside.

Brentford

Just west of Strand-in-the-Green over Kew Bridge on Kew Bridge Road is Kew Bridge Steam Museum seen in The Wisdom Of Crocodiles (1998) when Jude Law meets Elina Lewenstein.

Nick Nolte and Jeremy Northam visit the museum in The Golden Bowl (2000).

Charlie Hunnam takes Elijah Wood to his local, The Griffin, 57 Brook Road South, on the corner of Braemar Road, renamed "The Brigid Abbey" in Green Street (2005).

Peter Cook arrives at Syon Conservatory to be readmitted to Heaven in Bedazzled (1967). The conservatory is also seen in King Ralph (1991) when Peter O'Toole teaches deportment to John Goodman who ends up tripping into the fountain. The Great Hall of Syon House hosts the reception for the king of Zambezi.

The hall also features near the start of The Wings Of The Dove (1997) where at a party Alex Jennings chats up Helena Bonham Carter. Both the Great Hall and interior of the conservatory appear in The Avengers (1998). Again the hall is seen in Richard III (1995) as prime minister Jim Carter's residence as well as the rough'n'tumble game in Accident (1967). Nigel Hawthorne meets Julian Wadham in The Long Gallery in The Madness Of King George (1994). Syon house also features in Gosford Park (2001).

Kew, North Sheen

Nightwatchman Ian Wilson enters one of the side entrances of Kew Gardens Palm House at the beginning of The Day Of The Triffids (1962) and watches the meteor show before a Triffid attacks him.

61 Kew Green houses Ralph Fiennes' flat in The End Of The Affair (1999). Julianne Moore leaves here dazed after the bombing of next door. There are good shots of the Green with corrugated iron hiding the supposedly bombed site when a V1 rocket explodes behind St. Anne's church and when Fiennes rushes after Moore's taxi as it leaves 51 Royal Avenue where she lives with Stephen Rea.

Hugh Grant buys a toddler's car seat at Mothercare down Besant Drive off Mortlake Road in About A Boy (2002). Hugh Grant's local Sainsbury's, supposedly within walking distance of EC1, is on Lower Richmond Road near Manor Circus roundabout.

Disguised slightly by a fake cover over the steps, Richmond Theatre on Little Green is the "Palace Theatre" where Dennis Price confronts Peter Sellers in The Naked Truth (1957).

It is the exterior of the nightclub of The Krays (1990).

On a date with Cherie Lunghi, Richard E. Grant bumps into parents Judi Dench and Graham Swift in Jack and Sarah (1995). In Crimetime (1996) Stephen Baldwin and Sadie Frost leave the theatre which is showing Macbeth. Dustin Hoffman greets patrons on the first night of Johnny Depp's plays in Finding Neverland (2004).

Norman Eshley nearly runs over Susan Penhaligon at the southwest corner of Richmond Green simply called The Green between the two pubs The Cricketers and The Prince's Head in House Of Mortal Sin (1976).

Kate Winslet as Iris (2001) brings Hugh Bonneville to lunch with Sam West at Oak House, 2 Old Palace Place, right next to King Street. Here Twickenham is standing in for Oxford.

Ham, Petersham, Richmond Hill

Colin Firth lives at 9 King's Road in Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason (2004). Jacinda Barrett kisses Renee Zellweger at the top of the steps.

In Poor Cow (1965) Carol White has tea with a friend at a cafe, now a Nando's, on a terrace above Ormond Road, clearly signed in the film.

Gary Lewis takes Jamie Bell for an audition before Patrick Malahide and Barbara Leigh-Hunt to White Lodge, home of the Royal Ballet School, in the middle of Richmond Park, in Billy Elliot (2000).

At the end of Performance(1968) the Rolls ferrying James Fox crosses Richmond Park.

Teddington

Watch carefully as Chris Rea leaves his psychiatrist in Parting Shots(1998). He drives past The Lion on the corner of School House Lane and Wick Road so the house must be nearby but remains a tantalising mystery at date.

Croydon

From the underpass opposite Lansdowne Road on Wellesley Road one can look north to admire an establishing shot of "New York, 1984" in Velvet Goldmine (1998). Christian Bale runs along the driveway up to the Whitgift Centre in a later scene; both scenes have, rather inevitably, cars driving on the wrong side of the road.

To the east is, or was, Our Mother's House (1967) in Chepstow Rise. Watch for the very blurred sign when one of the girls receives a motorbike ride from a passer-by. All the Victorian houses in the area have been cleared, in an all too customary act of cultural vandalism, for 1970s housing and all that is left is the post box, street light and plane tree on Chichester Road, seen as the motorcyclist rows off. Dirk Bogarde's house stood close to the southeast corner of Chepstow Rise.

'Love Actually' film locations

The movie opens and closes at Heathrow Airport, with Hugh Grant's voiceover reassuring us of the ubiquity of warm, fuzzy feelings. The shots of emotional travellers were grabbed documentary-style. Don't worry. Your furtive assignation won't be up there on the big screen – everyone who's featured gave permission to be in the film. This is a London romcom, so we get the inevitable establishing shots of the city. The galleried atrium, decked out for Christmas, is that of Whiteley's, the vast Bayswater department store. This is also where Julia Roberts holds her photographic exhibition in Mike Nichols’ film of Closer.

The central court of Somerset House in the Strand, saw sterling service as a movie location over the years (GoldenEye, Sleepy Hollow etc) when it was a rather dull parking lot. Since the building’s renovation, it has been transformed into a pleasant fountain court and, in winter, a skating rink, which is how it appears in the film’s opening montage. The storec dressed us for Christmas is Whiteley's, Bayswater, London.

Oxford Street, an inexplicably crowded shopping hell, is expensive to close down on a weekday, or open up on a Sunday, it's rarely been seen on screen, though it's featured in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy but the magic name of Richard Curtis coaxed Selfridges & Co, 400 Oxford Street, W1, to open its doors for filming. After meeting up with his wife Karen (Emma Thompson) at nearby St Christopher’s Place, Harry (Alan Rickman) furtively buys a necklace for flirtatious Mia (Heike Makatsch) in the store. The shop assistant character (Rowan Atkinson), who makes such an elaborate job of wrapping the gift, was originally meant to be a recurring deus ex machina angel character (which is why he reappears with an unexplained knowing smile at the airport towards the end of the film). One of the first great department stores, there's been a Selfridges on this site since 1909. If you find the sculptural frontage too modest, you’ll be disappointed to learn that a plan to crown the building with a gigantic tower was never realised.

2a Blenheim Road, Turnham Green, W4, over in West London, was home to writer Jamie Bennett (Colin Firth), where he discovers his girlfriend in flagrante with his brother before fleeing to ‘Portugal’.

The recording studio, where Billy Mack (Bill Nighy) records his cheesy Christmas record, is Westway Studios, Ladbroke Grove in Notting Hill. His record company office is unmistakably City Hall, the London Assembly Building on the South Bank alongside Tower Bridge.

Andrew Lincoln's South Bank gallery is in Great Sutton Street, Clerkenwell, London. The South Bank gallery run by Mark (Andrew Lincoln) isn't on the South bank at all. It was an empty office - now a solicitors - at 26-27 Great Sutton Street, in Clerkenwell, which was Hugh Grant's neighbourhood in About A Boy.

Liam Neeson’s heart-to-heart talk takes place on Gabriel’s Wharf, South Bank, London. Queen’s Walk is the path running alongside the south ban of the River Thames. On Gabriel’s Wharf, in front of the Riviera Restaurant, 56 Upper Ground, you’ll find the bench on which Daniel (Liam Neeson), during a heart-to-heart chat, discovers that his distracted son (Thomas Sangster) is 'actually' in love.

Slightly further east along the walk is the Oxo Tower Wharf complex, home to Mark, where he embarrassedly leaves Juliet (Keira Knightley) with the wedding video. He exits the flat by the rear entrance of the wharf building on Barge House Street, through the courtyard to Oxo Tower Wharf itself. It's on the pier here that disgracefully ageing actor Maurice (Peter O'Toole) recites a speech from Macbeth for an unappreciative Jessie (Jodie Whittaker) in Venus.

The Prime Minister (Hugh Grant) and Natalie (Martine McCutcheon) attend a school concert at Elliott School, Pullman Gardens, Putney, southwest London.

The church in which Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor) marries Juliet to the unexpected strains of All You Need Is Love, is the Grosvenor Chapel, South Audley Street, in the exclusive Mayfair district. Daniel buries his wife at St Paul's Church, Rectory Grove, in Clapham SW4, south of the Thames.

When the Prime Minister (Hugh Grant) searches for Natalie in 'the dodgy end of Wandsworth', it's really 102 Poplar Road, Herne Hill where he eventually finds her. And, in these days of strict security, - 10 Downing Street - was a set built in the studio at Shepperton Studio.

You won’t find planes at the airport from which Colin (Kris Marshall) departs to find fulfillment in Wisconsin. It’s not an airport at all, but Sandown Park Racecourse in Esher, about 15 miles southwest of London, in Surrey. What is it with racecourses standing in for airports? Sandown previously stood in for Johannesburg Airport in Richard Attenborough's Cry Freedom, and St Petersburg Airport in GoldenEye is Epsom Racecourse. The Wisconsin bar itself, by the way, was no further away than a set built on the Shepperton backlot.

The radio studio, where Billy Mack reveals that his record is crap and that Britney Spears was a lousy shag, is Heat Radio, Mappin House, 4 Winsley Street, London W1.

The home of newlyweds Peter and Juliet where sadly lovestruck Mark silently declares his love with cue cards, is 27 St Luke's Mews. The original script called for him to carpet the mews with rose petals - a gesture which surely would have had every female in the audience shoving a finger down her throat and gagging.