Freaky Friday actual filming locations

  

Actual Southern California locations where 2003’s “Freaky Friday” was filmed.

At the start of this body-switching comedy, Anna Coleman (Lindsay Lohan) is seen attending “Sunset Ridge High School“.

Those school scenes were actually shot at a real high school, Palisades Charter High School, located at 15777 Bowdoin Street, in Pacific Palisades, CA.

This high school was also used as a location for the TV series “Popular”, as well as the movies “Crazy/Beautiful” and “The Glass House”.

Alumni of Palisades High include Jeff Bridges, Christie Brinkley, Katey Sagal, Penelope Ann Miller, Peter DeLuise, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles.

The scene where Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Anna go to the Chinese restaurant and get that fateful fortune cookie was filmed at L.A.’s Chinatown, located near Broadway & College Street in downtown Los Angeles.  

The Chinese restaurant building itself, which is called “House Chiang” in the movie, is actually a store in Chinatown named “Realm“, which sells home accessories. In the past, it used to really be a restaurant, and was made to look like a restaurant again for the movie. The address of Realm is 425 Gin Ling Way (in Central Plaza), in Los Angeles’ Chinatown.


Anna, in her mother’s body, goes on a shopping spree with her mother’s credit cards, getting a new haircut, new clothes, and even piercing Tess’s ear.These shopping scenes were shot at the Third Street Promenade, in Santa Monica, California, which is (of course) on Third Street, between Broadway and Wilshire., just south of the Santa Monica Place mall.

 

In the screenshot to the right, note the water-spouting, ivy-covered dinosaur (triceratops), a well-known landmark along the open-air Promenade.

Anna (in her mother’s body) is forced to visit the elementary school of her little brother, Harry (Ryan Malgarini), to have a meeting with his teacher. It’s there that she reads his essay and discovers that he really thinks his sister is great. That school was actually Doris Place Elementary School, and is located at 2225 Doris Place, just north of Dodger Stadium, in the Elysian Park/Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles.


There’s a scene where Anna and Tess are out driving, and Anna (in her mother’s body) starts to eat French fries. Her mother (in her daughter’s body) stops her, saying the calories will go right to her thighs, but then Tess remembers that she’s in her young daughter’s body – so she takes the fries away from Anna and eats them herself.

This scene was shot on Pacific Coast Highway, in Pacific Palisades, heading towards Santa Monica. In the screenshot above, we’re looking north, and the car is heading south (along the coast, away from Malibu) on the road which runs below Palisades Cliffside Park.

 


And speaking of Palisades Cliffside Park, it can be seen here in the scene where Tess’s fiancee, Ryan (Mark Harmon) spots her on the back of a motorcycle with a young man. (This is actually daughter Anna in her mother’s body, hanging out with her boyfriend, Jake (Chad Michael Murray)). The shot above is looking northwest, on Ocean Blvd, in Santa Monica.

Palisades Cliffside Park runs for over a mile atop the west side of Ocean Blvd., along the coast of Santa Monica, between San Vicente Blvd (on the north) and Colorado Ave (on the south), overlooking Pacific Coast Highway and the ocean below. The long, narrow park’s green stretches and numerous tall palm trees can be seen in many other movies.

When Anna’s rock group (Pink Slip) gets a chance to audition for the KIIS Wango Tango, the audition/concert is held at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip. Tess, in her daughter’s body, doesn’t know how to play the guitar, so Anna (in her mother’s body) plays it backstage, while Tess fakes it onstage.

For a change, both the interiors and exterior scenes were actually filmed at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip. The address is 8430 Sunset Blvd., in West Hollywood.

(This is a Disney film, so it’s interesting to note that there is anotherHouse of Blues at “Downtown Disney”, the shopping/dining mall right next to Disneyland in Anaheim.)

Also on the Sunset Strip, just down the road, is the Sunset Tower Hotel. This is where they shot the scenes of the wedding party. The hotel is located at 8358 Sunset Blvd., in West Hollywood.

A beautiful 1929 Art Deco tower, it was known as the Argyle Hotel when this film was shot. But it started out as the Sunset Tower. Former residents included John Wayne, Howard Hughes, Paulette Goddard, Billie Burke, Zasu Pitts, and even gangster Bugsy Siegel. The tower was also seen in the movies “The Player”, “Get Shorty”, “Strange Days” and “Wayne’s World Part II” .