A mansion on Brighton seafront was transformed into a seedy hotel for a new adaptation of a novel.

The 11-bedroom Regency house, in Eastern Terrace, was stained, chipped and rusted and parking banned in surrounding roads to allow crews to convert Eastern Terrace into a Forties street.

Seafront traffic was stopped to allow vintage cars, buses and motorbikes to pass by in the background. The film, based on a novel by Graham Greene, is set in the Forties and features Ralph Fiennes as author Maurice Bendrix and Julianne Moore, who plays bureaucrat's wife Sarah Miles.

The illicit lovers escape to Brighton for a secret tryst after their affair is discovered and stay in a dingy hotel. The chosen property, off Marine Parade, was given a dramatic make-over to fit in with the atmosphere and Forties setting of the film.

The exterior of the 11-bedroom double-fronted property was painted with rust and dingy hotel signs put up. A rusty canopy was built and bomb warnings put on nearby properties to make the wartime scene more realistic.

Dr Jennifer Farhoumand, 50, who owns the family home with her husband' Noushin, 57, saw her immaculate drawing room with Regency furniture stripped and transformed into the lover's hotel bedroom.

She said: "The transformation was very realistic and certainly took our home back into a time warp. The crew were absolute professionals, they turned the newly decorated room into a sleazy 1940s hotel, put up a balustrade and built a platform for the lovers to eat on.They stained the walls and painted rust on them. They made a fake door to lead to the bathroom."

The house, off Marine Parade, was handpicked by Columbia Pictures location scouts.It was a unique experience for Jennifer, Noushin and their 11-year-old daughter to live alongside the stars and crew while filming went on for ten days. Jennifer said the house was chosen because producers were looking for a room with a view of the West Pier.

She said: "We were not allowed in during filming, but luckily our home has five storeys so we could keep quite separate. My daughter was so excited and the crew were marvellous with her, letting her run around and get everyone's autograph.

"Then at the end of ten days' filming, the crew redecorated and put everything back as they had left it - only the fake door and the balustrades gave any hint they here at all."

She added: "The crew were absolutely perfectly behaved and very organised. I saw Ralph Fiennes, of course, but I never spoke to him. When they knocked on the door and asked to use the house as a location at first I didn't believe them. But then they explained why the house would be perfect, that it was near the edge of a road and the room had a view of the pier."

She said she enjoyed watching the film - which features explicit love-making scenes - but thought it was "rather sophisticated" for general release. Dr Noushin Farhoumand, who is a consultant psychiatrist at Brighton General Hospital, said: "This was one of the finest houses built in Brighton in 1828 and was home to King Manoel 11 of Portugal during his exile in England. Ironically in wartime it actually was a hotel, The Royal Sussex Hotel, so it is a case of deja vu for the building."

Jennifer added: "It was good to see the house in the film but you only see the outside for a few seconds. Blink and it's gone! They show the inside a lot more and I think it worked really well."

Other locations around town which feature in the movie include the Royal Pavilion. Film crews used the grandstand at Brighton Racecourse as a dressing room for locals, who were recruited as extras.

The shoot has boosted Brighton and Hove's reputation as one of the top spots in the country for filming. Last year, the town was chosen as the location for Circus, a film starring John Hannah and Amanda Donahue.

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