The Chateau Marmont Hotel remains a Hollywood institution. Photo / Getty Images.
The Chateau Marmont Hotel remains a Hollywood institution. Photo / Getty Images.
From celebrity drug overdoses and sex scandals – Hollywood's Chateau Marmont Hotel has seen it all.
The most notorious incident to have occurred at the iconic hotel is the death of actor and comedian John Belushi at age 33, following a speedball injection at the end of a five day cocaine and heroin binge.
But there are plenty more recent examples of celebrities behaving badly at the hotel perched on the hill above Sunset Boulevard and it remains a Hollywood institution where almost anything goes.
John Belushi's body is taken from a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont. Photo / Getty Images.
The hotels private bungalows and rooms have given refuge to generations of actors, musicians and writers seeking inspiration or escape from their work, with staff adept at turning a blind eye to bad behaviour.
A new book The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont reflects upon the hotel's colourful, glamorous and sometimes dark past, with author Shawn Levy describing it as "the hotel where you could do what you wanted."
Lindsay Lohan looks to avoid paparazzi at the Chateau Marmont in 2010. Photo / Getty Images.
In more recent times however, some of Hollywood's biggest names have crossed the line and found themselves in hot water, with the late actor Heath Ledger captured on film using cocaine on the hotel's front balcony in 2006, two years before he died of an overdose.
The following year, pop singer Britney Spears was reportedly banned from the hotel for her poor table manners, and fellow party girl Lindsay Lohan was sent packing in 20212 after failing to pay her $46,000 bill.
Britney Spears arrives at The Chateau Marmont in 2010. Photo / Getty Images.
After the 2004 Oscars, rumours were rife that Benicio Del Toro and Scarlett Johansson shared an elevator tryst at the Marmont.
But the hotel continues to host the biggest parties in town, with Jay-Z and Beyoncé choosing the Chateau's garage as the venue for their lush Oscars bash in February, which saw the likes of Jamie Foxx, Rihanna and Leonardo DiCaprio in attendance.
The hotel has also been immortalised in cinema with Sofia Coppola paying tribute to the hotel with her 2010 fil Somewhere, shot largely within the walls of Room 59, and in song, including Lana Del Ray's Off to the Races, and in literature with James Ellroy's noir classic The Big Nowhere.
After recently celebrating its 90th anniversary after it first opened in 1929, there's still plenty of life left in the Chateau Marmont yet.
