The area around Greenwich Park is one of the top film locations in the UK. Stars including Harrison Ford, Pierce Brosnan, Hugh Grant and Angelina Jolie have all shot scenes here.
The park itself has been used in several period dramas based on classic novels. It was the setting for The Secret Agent (1996), Christopher Hampton's adaptation of Joseph Conrad's novel, starring Bob Hoskins and Gerard Depardieu. It was used for many of the London scenes in the 1995 version of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility , starring Kate Winslet and Emma Thompson. It also featured in The Go-Between (1970), the period drama adapted from the romance by L. P. Hartley.
Filming in Greenwich Park is said to have given Daniel Day-Lewis his first taste of movie acting. In 1970, John Schlesinger was looking for local children to be extras in a scene for Sunday, Bloody Sunday , starring Glenda Jackson and Peter Finch. Day-Lewis lived in Greenwich and along with a group of friends, he was recommended to Schlesinger by a local shopkeeper.
You can also spot scenes from the park in Layer Cake (2004), the crime thriller starring Daniel Craig, and in Longitude (2000), the BAFTA-winning TV film about John Harrison, a eighteenth century clock-maker who solved the problem of navigation at sea.
Park Row, at the foot of Greenwich Park, was used by Jane Campion for her adaptation of the Henry James novel, Portrait of a Lady (1996), starring Nicole Kidman. You can also see Park Row in Photographing Fairies (1997), directed by Nick Willing and starring Ben Kingsley, The Parent Trap (1998) with Natasha Richardson and Dennis Quaid and King Ralph (1991), starring John Goodman.
The baroque masterpiece, the Old Royal Naval College, on the edge of Greenwich Park, is one of the most popular locations in the area. It was used in Patriot Games (1992) as a stand-in for Buckingham Palace and the naval academy, where Harrison Ford, as CIA analyst Jack Ryan, gives a lecture. In Charlotte Gray (2001), Cate Blanchett in the title role, attends a book launch set in the courtyard. The 2nd wedding in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) was filmed in the College chapel. This is where the clergyman, played by Rowan Atkinson, makes his "holy goat" gaffe when he tries to marry the happy couple.
The Painted Hall at the College became The Duke's Theatre in Michael Winner's remake of The Wicked Lady (1983), and doubled as the Venetian headquarters of a sinister organisation plotting to take over the world in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001). It also featured in The Madness of King George (1994), Stanley Donen's Indiscreet (1958) and Quills (2000).
