Hollywood's Beaufort: Forrest Gump, The Big Chill, and Prince of Tides
Near Beaufort, South Carolina
Among its other distinctions, Beaufort has served as a film set for some of the most iconic American movies of the last forty years. The combination of antebellum architecture, tidal waterways, Spanish moss, and a town that still looks like the Deep South of an earlier century has made it irresistible to filmmakers. The Big Chill, the nineteen eighty three film directed by Lawrence Kasdan about old college friends reuniting after a death, was filmed primarily at Tidalholm, an antebellum mansion in downtown Beaufort.
The house became the gathering place in the film where the characters grieve and remember, and it is still one of Beaufort's most recognized landmarks. Forrest Gump, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture for nineteen ninety four, was filmed partly in Beaufort and on the surrounding islands. Many of the Vietnam sequences were filmed on Fripp Island and Hunting Island to the south.
The Prince of Tides, directed by Barbra Streisand and released in nineteen ninety one, is based on the Pat Conroy novel set in the Beaufort area. The production returned to the landscape Conroy had written about, using the surrounding waterways and islands as its setting. Three of the most seen American films of their decades, all set in the same small waterfront town.
