The London Aquarium, County Hall, Westminster Bridge Road, SE1
You'll find the London Aquarium on the South bank of the river Thames, within the County Hall building (right next to the London Eye). Opened in 1997, the Aquarium is one of Europe's largest displays of aquatic life, displaying over 350 species.
It's here that Larry (Clive Owen) is set up to meet the unwitting Anna (Julia Roberts) in Mike Nichols’ film of Patrick Marber's play Closer.
Before the aquarium opened, County Hall was the seat of the old London County Council, which became the Greater London Council, until it was dissolved by Margaret Thatcher in 1986. The interior has been regularly used as a film location. It doubled for the lobby and corridors of CIA HQ in ‘Langley, Virginia’ in Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible and the ‘Old Bailey’ courthouse in Scandal.
County Hall’s basement became the interior of the ‘Tower of London’ (the exterior was the Tate Modern) in Richard Loncraine’s Thirties-set Richard III, while its entrance was the ‘Lord Protector’s HQ’ in the same film. The Terrace in front of County Hall is the setting for the lecture at the opening of Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy: the pompous politician claims that the Thames is free from foreign bodies, just as the corpse of the ‘Necktie killer’ victim is washed up, while Hitch puts in his cameo as a bowler-hatted, unsmiling rubbernecker in the crowd.
A few computer-generated embellishments turn County Hall into the exterior of Austin Powers’ groovy pad in Goldmember. And back in 1950, Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) pretends to get a drinks licence at the southern entrance on Westminster Bridge Road in Jules Dassin’s tough noir thriller Night and the City.
Trivia: on Belvedere Road, on the south side of County Hall, is the branch of Japanese restaurant chain Yo! Sushi where Rowan Atkinson meets Natalie Imbruglia, and naturally gets his tie caught in the conveyor belt, in spy spoof Johnny English.
Closer (2004, dir: Mike Nichols)
Mission: Impossible (1996, dir: Brian De Palma)
Scandal (1989, dir: Michael Caton-Jones)
Richard III (1995, dir: Richard Loncraine)
Frenzy (1972, dir: Alfred Hitchcock)
Goldmember (2002, dir: Jay Roach)
Night And The City (1950, dir: Jules Dassin)
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