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Seeing Stars: Where the Movies Were Shot (on Location)
2001
 In
the 2001 Disney comedy, "THE PRINCESS DIARIES",
Anne Hathaway
plays a high school student who finds out that she's actually the princess
of the fictional kingdom of Genovia.
The story is supposed to take place in San Francisco.
But of course it's all Hollywood magic, and most of the scenes were really
shot in and around L.A.
- When Anne visits Julie Andrews
at the Genovian Consulate, the filmmakers actually shot those
scenes at the historic Doheny mansion, on the campus of Mount St. Mary's
college, at 8 Chester Place,
near downtown Los Angeles.
 The
interior scenes of the lavish marble ballrooms were also shot inside the
grand mansion. The gardens surrounding the buildings were also used in
the film. In fact, this beautiful private campus is often used for fiming.
Recent productions shot there include the 1999 Mel Gibson movie "Payback",
the 1998 HBO movie "Winchell",
the PBS Masterpiece Theatre version of "Song of the Lark"
and episodes of the TV series "Sliders",
"The Profiler," "Gideon's Crossing",
"Agency" and "Gilmore Girls".
 Also,
the Doheny mansion is located right next door to St. Vincent de Paul
church, which was featured prominently in Arnold Schwarzenegger's
thriller, "End of Days".
The church was built by Doheny.
(This Doheny campus shouldn't be confused with the
main hilltop campus of Mount St. Mary's college, which is located
on Chalon Road in Brentwood.)
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Remember Mia's private school, Grove High?
Well, those high school scenes were actually shot
at a private Catholic girls school called Alverno High,
which is located at 200 N. Michillinda Ave.,
in the small city of Sierra Madre
(just northeast of Pasadena). One notable building on the campus is the
Villa del Sol d'Oro, a replica of a famous Villa in Italy which legend holds
was designed by Michaelangelo.
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- And what about the old firehouse where Mia and her
mother lived?
Exterior shots were in San Francisco, but the interiors (where she slides
down the fire pole) were a set, built inside a sound stage on the back
lot of Walt Disney Studios
in Burbank. The same Stage 2 where "Mary Poppins" was
filmed.
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- What about that beach party scene? The one
where 'Lana' (Mandy Moore) sang
a song and the press harrassed Mia with a helicopter?
That was supposed to be Baker Beach in San Francisco, but actually
almost all of those scenes were shot on a stretch of Zuma
Beach, in Malibu, CA.
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So what about the "Rocks Around the Clock",
that indoor rock-climbing-wall place where Mia worked part time, and where
Mia and her mother talked about Mia meeting her grandmother, while both
were suspended in mid-air?
That was shot in the L.A. area too, at the The L.A.
Rock Gym, located at 4926 W. Rosecrans
Ave, in the city of Hawthorne (which
was the home town of The Beach Boys, by the way).
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Also see our full
pages about the locations of 2001's
"The Fast & the
Furious", "Pearl
Harbor", & "Mulholland
Drive"
1920's
- 1930's - 1940's
- 1950's - 1960's
- 1970's - 1980's
- 1990 - 1991
- 1992 - 1993
- 1994 -
1995 - 1996
1997 - 1998
- 1999 - 2000
- 2001
- 2002
- 2003
- 2004
- 2005
- 2006 - 2007-
2008 - 2009-
2008
2009 -
2010 -
2011 -
2012 -
2013
 
* Locations marked by an asterisk
(*) may be located in areas with high crime rates.
Exercise reasonable caution.
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for something in particular? Search the Seeing-Stars website!
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