London on Screen: The Hotels Where Bond, Hugh Grant and the Roy Family Checked In

London has more five-star hotels per square mile than almost anywhere, and film crews have worked out that most of them come pre-dressed. Gilded lobbies, liveried doormen, a bar that has looked the same since the 1920s: production designers would spend months building what these places already are. The result is that a surprising number of the city's grandest addresses have played themselves, and a few have played somewhere else entirely.

The Ritz London: Notting Hill (1999)

The most famous press junket in film history happens on Piccadilly. In Notting Hill, Hugh Grant's bookshop owner William Thacker blags his way into film star Anna Scott's hotel interviews by claiming to write for Horse & Hound, then sits through a series of increasingly absurd conversations about a film he hasn't seen. Julia Roberts played Anna, and the hotel is The Ritz London.

The filmmakers chose it because nothing says "British" to an international audience quite like the Ritz, and most of the hotel's guests and staff on screen are actors. Two aren't. The Ritz's own night porter and head hall porter appear in the film, which makes them two of the very few hotel employees in cinema to play themselves at their actual jobs. Both Roberts and Grant stayed at the hotel during the shoot.

The Langham, London: GoldenEye (1995), Burnt (2015) and more

Pierce Brosnan's first Bond film sends 007 to St Petersburg, where he's told to meet a contact at the Grand Hotel Europe. The building he walks up to has a Russian flag over the entrance and is actually The Langham on Portland Place, at the top of Regent Street and directly opposite the BBC. Only the exterior was filmed here; the interiors were built in a studio.

The Langham opened in 1865 as London's first grand hotel and lays claim to helping popularise afternoon tea. It has been busy on screen since. Bradley Cooper's volatile chef Adam Jones takes over its restaurant in Burnt (2015). RED 2 (2013) and the Olsen twins' Winning London (2001) both filmed here, and so did Veep: the Season 3 episode "Special Relationship," in which Selina Meyer's team crosses the Atlantic, used the hotel.

The Savoy: Entrapment (1999), See How They Run (2022)

The forecourt of The Savoy, Savoy Court, is the only street in Britain where traffic drives on the right, a rule that dates from the days when it made hansom cabs easier to unload at the door. It's also one of the most filmed hotel entrances in London.

Sean Connery, a longtime guest, combined business with pleasure on Entrapment, shooting a scene at the hotel at four in the morning with Catherine Zeta-Jones. In 2022 the hotel became something close to a lead character in See How They Run, the Agatha Christie-flavoured murder mystery starring Saoirse Ronan and Sam Rockwell, set in 1950s London's theatre world. The production filmed while the hotel was temporarily closed, using Savoy Court, the front hall and the Savoy Suite. The connection is fitting: the producers of Christie's The Mousetrap have celebrated the play's milestones at the Savoy for decades.

The hotel also got its own documentary treatment in ITV's 2010 series The Savoy, filmed around its reopening after a major restoration.

The Dorchester: Wimbledon (2004)

In the tennis romantic comedy Wimbledon, Paul Bettany plays a fading British pro who falls for Kirsten Dunst's rising American star during the championships. Among the London landmarks woven through the film, The Dorchester on Park Lane makes an appearance, along with the South Bank and Heathrow.

Claridge's and the Corinthia: the documentary stars

Not every great hotel role is fiction. In 2012 the BBC spent a year behind the scenes at Claridge's for Inside Claridge's, a three-part series that turned its then general manager, Thomas Kochs, into an unlikely television star. The same director, Jane Treays, later followed Kochs to his next job at Corinthia London, near Trafalgar Square, for the BBC's A Hotel for the Super Rich & Famous (2018). The Corinthia occupies a Victorian building that spent years as a Ministry of Defence office, and it was also where the production of Skyfall was announced to the press in 2011.

Canary Riverside Plaza: Skyfall (2012)

When Daniel Craig's Bond swims lengths in his Shanghai hotel in Skyfall, he isn't in Shanghai. The pool belongs to the health club adjacent to the Canary Riverside Plaza Hotel in Canary Wharf, and hotel guests get complimentary access. Skyfall went on to win two Academy Awards, including Best Original Song for Adele's theme.

Gleneagles: Succession (Season 2)

Season 2 of Succession takes the Roy family to Scotland for a toxic company celebration in Dundee, and the family stays at Gleneagles in Perthshire. Succession won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series three times. Gleneagles has been hosting the wealthy since 1924, though rarely ones as unpleasant as the Roys.

Cliveden House: Help! (1965)

Cliveden, the Italianate mansion above the Thames in Berkshire, has had one of the most eventful histories of any English country house: home of the Astors, salon of the interwar political elite, and backdrop to the Profumo affair in 1961. The Beatles filmed scenes for Help! on the estate, which makes it one of the few five-star hotels in England with a Beatles film credit.