Set jetting.  It’s a term we like to use here at VisitBritain and was actually first coined by travel writer Gretchen Kelly.  It’s a trend of travelling to destinations (bascially, film sets) first seen in movies.  Catchy, isn’t it?!  And it’s only in London where you can set jet until you cry uncle.  Really.  The city is one big movie set – from enchanted locales seen in films like The Duchess and Shakespeare in Love to sites of epic fight scenes in features like Sherlock Holmes and James Bond. 

Historic Greenwich is a great place to start.  Located just 20 minutes from Central London, Greenwich is chock full of places to set jet.  Take Greenwich Park, which was used in the recently released film The Wolfman starring Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins.  

Nearby you’ll find the Old Royal Naval College.  It was here that Kiera Knightley shot scenes from The Duchess and where one of the weddings from the 90’s hit Four Weddings and a Funeral was filmed.

Hop west to London’s South Bank, which has been the stomping grounds of wizards, ghosts and gangsters.  Westminster Bridge, for example, was were Harry and friends zip away on their broomsticks in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.  The bridge has also appeared in the adaptation of Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta.  And I just had to put this one in…Westminster Bridge was where Glenn Close saw everything (inlcuding buses) in spots.  Yup, 102 Dalmatians was filmed here.

Down the river, there’s Tower Bridge.  (Not to be confused with London Bridge, btw).  It’s so iconic and has been in films dating all the way back to the 1950’s.  We saw it as the backdrop in Laurence Olivier’s Richard III (1955) and 60 years later in the final fight scene in Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes.

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Despite Jude Law’s depature from London for a hot ticket role on Broadway’s in Hamlet (and to throw oranges at NYU gawkers), there is still plenty of rich celebrity sightings to be had on stage in London’s West End.

Fortunately for us, the gaping hole he’s left in London’s celebrity scene is filled by a number of Hollywood stars hitting the capital’s own theatre district. You can still catch Kevin Spacey in Inherit the Wind at the Old Vic, while in December legendary James Earl Jones brings that voice to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Novello. In 2010 MGM legend Debbie Reynolds tours Britain with her one-woman show ahead of a West End season and the original Broadway cast of Hair gets a transplant to the UK.

James Earl Jones (far right) and cast of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, photo credit Jeff Fasano

The London celebrity scene is also complemented by Brit starlets taking a break from LA. Oscar-nom’d Keira Knightley debuts as a vacuous Hollywood starlet in the The Misanthrope. Rupert Friend – getting steamy with Emily Blunt’s Young Victoria next month – appears in The Little Dog Laughed in January. Jonathan Pryce (Pirates…, GI Joe) is in Pinter’s The Caretaker, while Kim Catrall returns ahead of Sex and the City 2 by starring in Noel Coward’s Private Lives.

Last but not least, the Fonz himself, Henry Winkler, will bring the cool to the role of Captain Hook this December at the Empire Theatre in Liverpool.

More at www.londontheatre.co.uk

-Elliott Frisby, contributing editor