The best beaches seen on screen

If there’s one type of filming location that fires the imagination for set-jetting travelers, it’s the beach. From pristine white sand and clear turquoise waters to cooler climes, there’s something for every type of traveler. Here’s our roundup of the top movies and TV series filmed on location on the world’s dreamiest beaches to inspire your next vacation…

Get a slice of Glass Onion luxury in Greece

Greece

Lavish doesn’t seem a strong enough word for the vacation home in the second of Netflix’s Benoit Blanc mysteries (the third is due in 2025). In real life, it is Villa 20, a mega mansion that makes up part of the Amanzoe luxury resort in the très chic seaside town of Porto Heli on the Peloponnese coast of Greece. Of course, in the film, it’s an island… which is where the idyllic, car-free island of Spetses comes in. A 10-minute ferry ride from Porto Heli, the scenes where the characters wait to board their yacht were filmed in Dapia harbor on the island’s north coast. Seen in the background is the Poseidonion Grand Hotel, where the cast and crew set up camp.

Cape Cod is the place for The Perfect Couple

Cape Cod, MA

The recent Netflix hit is set on the island of Nantucket, a summer playground for a tony crowd off the coast of Cape Cod. For logistical reasons—mostly lugging around all that filming equipment by ferry—it was decided to stick to the mainland, namely Cape Cod’s Chatham, which has a similarly distinctive New England look and feel. Nicole Kidman’s romantic novelist character lives in a grand beach house on Eastward Point’s beach, where all the action takes place (including that dance sequence of the opening titles). The production also leveraged the society glamour of the tennis club on Lighthouse Beach. Once you’ve explored Chatham’s coastline, a haven for wildlife including seals and migrating birds, take the 80-minute boat ride from nearby Harwich for a visit to actual Nantucket.

Set sail to The Beach on Phi Phi Leh

Thailand

Very probably the most visited, most photographed movie beach of all time, Maya Bay on the unassuming, uninhabited Thai island of Koh Phi Phi Leh has been attracting backpacking throngs for a quarter of a century—long before the word “Instagrammable” ventured into our vocab. The jaw-droppingly stunning, white-sand beach, with its coral reef and backdrop of dramatic limestone rocks, closed to tourists for four years until 2022 for a well-deserved restorative break, and visitor numbers on boat tours are now limited, with swimming banned. Stay instead on Phi Phi Leh’s big sister island, Phi Phi Don, an easy ferry ride from Krabi and Phuket.

Go back in the water at Jaws set Martha’s Vineyard

Martha’s Vineyard, MA

The Massachusetts vacation hotspot was the home of Steven Spielberg’s iconic movie—which celebrates its 50th birthday in 2025. There are more than 20 white-sand beaches on Martha’s Vineyard, with calm waters on the north shore and rolling surf on the Atlantic south—and, no, you do not need to stay out of the water. South Beach and Cow Beach in Edgartown (home of the fictional Amity town) were used for those iconic shark attack scenes, while, over the other side of the island, Lobsterville Beach and the now semi-private (you need to buy a permit) Lucy Vincent Beach also made guest appearances. Visit “Jaws Bridge” (even Google Maps calls it that) north of Edgartown beach and head to Martha’s Vineyard Museum for the new 50th-anniversary exhibition about the movie.

Stroll the British seafront from Shakespeare in Love

Holkham, Norfolk, UK

The final scenes of the highly decorated movie see Gwyneth Paltrow walking towards her Oscar across the vast sands of Holkham Beach, part of a nature reserve on the east coast of England. It’s not the only time Hollywood has paid a visit to this quaint part of the world—this beach even became part of the Marvel universe when it featured in last summer’s Deadpool & Wolverine. When the tide is out, the beach, home to many shorebirds, stretches for miles, and the surrounding pinewoods and dunes are the habitat of varied species of butterfly and rare flora and fauna. Visit the stately home Holkham Hall—which has its own movie history, starring in The Duchess with Keira Knightley—and stay in the charming fishing village Wells-next-the-Sea.

Perfect your Baywatch run on California’s beaches

LA County, CA, and Florida

The beach that David Hasselhoff ran up and down more times than he probably cares to remember as the world’s most famous lifeguard, Mitch Buchanan, was the Will Rogers State Beach in the Pacific Palisades. Named after the 1930s cowboy actor whose land was donated to the State of California by his widow, its two miles of coastline offer a classic slice of LA beach life and the opportunity to swim, play volleyball, or cycle along to Santa Monica Pier. The 2017 movie version, however, crossed coasts, plumping for a Florida setting—namely Deerfield Beach, north of Fort Lauderdale and south of Palm Beach, home to a 1,000-foot fishing pier as well as a raft of watersports.

Surf the picturesque playas of Point Break fame

Los Angeles, CA, Oregon and Hawaii

The cult surf movie didn’t exactly restrict itself when it came to cherry-picking beaches for the action. It all starts on LA’s Manhattan Beach pier where Keanu Reeves’ character buys his first board, before we head to Neptune’s Net, the beachfront, surfer-favorite seafood spot in Malibu that’s still going strong today. Other California surf spots in the picture are Dockweiler State Beach in Playa Del Rey and Malibu’s Leo Carrillo State Beach. The cast and crew also headed to Hawaii and the shores of Oahu to capture the dramatic waves a surfing movie would naturally require. Finally, the Oregon coast played the part of Australia, with Indian Beach at Ecola State Park posing as renowned surf spot Bells Beach near Melbourne.