HOLLYWOOD has long had a love affair with Dorset, from sumptuous period dramas to quirky comedies and even action thrillers have been filmed in the county.

Here is our fun list of ten movies filmed in Dorset.

 

Far From the Madding Crowd

Dorset Echo:

(Pic credit Fox Searchlight)

A new version of the Thomas Hardye classic was filmed in various locations across Dorset including Beaminster and Sherborne, late last year.

Carey Mulligan stars as heroine Bathsheba Everdene alongside Matthias Schoenaerts as Gabriel Oak and Tom Sturridge as Frank Troy.

The film is slated for release this spring.

The 1967 film starring Terrence Stamp and Julie Christie was also filmed around Dorset including at Maiden Castle.

 

The French Lieutenants Woman

Dorset Echo:

Meryl Streep and Jeremy irons starred in the 1981 adaptation of the novel by John Fowles, following the two plots of a Victorian period drama involving the gentleman Charles Smithson and the complex and troubled Sarah Woodruff, ‘The French Lieutenant's Woman’ and the second plot follows the actors Mike and Anna, who are playing the lead roles in a modern filming of the story.

The film was shot in Lyme Regis and famously uses The Cobb as a dramatic backdrop with a hooded Meryl Steep looking out to sea.

 

The Boat That Rocked

Dorset Echo:

(Pic credit Universal Studios)

Portland Harbour took centre stage in the 2008 film starring Rhys Ifans, Bill Nighy and Nick Frost about a pirate radio station in the North Sea.

Filming for the Richard Curtis film took place on the former Dutch hospital ship Timor Challenger, previously De Hoop, moored in Portland Harbour, Dorset.

Rhys Ifans and his then-girlfriend Sienna Miller were seen taking part in the pub quiz at the Old Rooms Inn at Weymouth Harbour and Bill Nighy was said to have been reluctant to return to London after staying in the area.

Swinging sixties street scenes were filmed at Castletown and Lyme Regis and Kimmeridge were also used as locations.

 

Persuasion

Dorset Echo:

(Pic credit Clerkenwell Films for ITV)

Both the 1995 and 2007 adaptations of the classic Jane Austen book were filmed in Lyme Regis.

In the 2007 version Rupert Penry-Jones playing Captain Frederick Wentworth. In the book Chapters 11 to 14 are set in the seaside town, the characters arrive in November and described the out-of-season holiday resort with its beautiful cliffs.

 

World War Z

Dorset Echo:

(Pic credit Dorset Echo)

Brad Pitt set the hearts of the ladies of Dorset fluttering when he spent a day filming at Lulworth Cove in November 2012.

The Hollywood hunk spent the day racing up and down the cove in a boat, filming a scene where his character meets up with his family in the apocalyptic zombie action thriller.

 

Tamara Drewe

Dorset Echo:

(Pic credit PA PicSelect- Peter Mountain)

Bond-girl Gemma Arterton took on the role of journalist Tamara in the 2010 comedy, based on the comic strip by Posy Simmonds.

The original comic was a reworking of the class Thomas Hardye novel Far From the Madding Crowd.

Set in Ewedown, a fictitious Dorset village, the film was shot in various town and villages around the county.

The story follows the young journalist who returns home with the intention of selling her old family home that she has just inherited.

 

The Damned

Dorset Echo:

(Oliver Reed as Hannibal Brookes- Pic credit United Artists)

Oliver Reed, Macdonald Carey and Shirley Anne Field starred in the 1960s Hammer Film production, based on H.L. Lawrence's novel The Children of Light.

The science-fiction follows a tourist in Weymouth as he gets mixed up in a military plot where radioactive children are kept hidden from the world in a secret cliff side military base.

 

Nanny McPhee

Dorset Echo:

(Pic credit - PA- Ian West)

Emma Thompson took on a house-full of unruly children in this 2005 family-friendly fantasy film.

Along with co-star Colin Firth, the team filmed some of the action in Purbeck.

Using a mixture of good manners and magic, Nanny McPhee changes the family’s lives.

 

From Time to Time

Dorset Echo:

(Pic Credit Dorset Echo)

Dorset’s Julian Fellowes (of Downton Abby fame) directed this 2009 adventure film starring Maggie Smith, High Bonneville and Timothy Spall.

The film was shot at Athelhampton House and follows the ghostly goings on across two worlds in two different centuries.

 

Emma

Dorset Echo:

(Pic creit- PA- Ian West)

Evershot and Dorchester were some of the backdrops used for the 1996 film version of Jane Austen’s Emma.

Gwyneth Paltrow starred as Emma with Jeremy Northam as George Knightly, the tale of love and match-making

Do you remember these being made? Send us your pictures of the filming to newsdesk@dorsetecho.co.uk