Freestanding glass office towers and a curved hotel stand apart across wide plazas and sunken courtyards.
What Century City looks like
Olympic Boulevard runs past drought tolerant landscaping toward a cluster of freestanding glass office towers and a curved hotel. Wide plazas, sunken courtyards and multi level parking structures set the buildings apart from the street.
rises 34 stories in tinted glass and granite at 2121 Avenue of the Stars, its stepped top visible above the surrounding roofline. The twin stand nearby, 44 story aluminum and glass towers spaced apart with open sky between them, over one of the largest underground parking garages in the world.
The former 's curved facade, now the Fairmont Century Plaza, sits low against two round residential towers built behind it. Century Park East holds more towers, including the dark glass and a row of white concrete apartment towers along the avenue.
The district's mall sits near Century Park West, with a Metro D Line station due to open nearby. A lawn at Century Park hosts a small stage between the office towers, and Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area's hills give a wide view of the whole cluster.
Shot in Century City
Die Hard is Century City's most documented use, shot almost entirely in and around the real Fox Plaza while the building was still under construction. The same tower later stood in for a fictional radio station in Airheads and one of the buildings destroyed in Fight Club's ending.
Die Hard, 1988
Fox Plaza
Played Nakatomi Plaza
Fox Plaza was still under construction when Die Hard's production designer Jackson De Govia picked it late in the process, needing a building that was mostly empty. The owners agreed to two conditions, no filming during the day and no damage from the explosions. Bruce Willis did his own rooftop stunt off a real five story parking garage, a twenty five foot leap onto an airbag with a wall of flame behind him. For Alan Rickman's fall at the end, stuntman Ken Bates was lowered 318 feet down the actual building. The hostages' thirtieth floor, with its nod to Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, was one of the few sets the production built rather than film for real. Filming ran from November 1987 to March 1988.
Remington Steele, 1982
Played the Remington Steele and Blue Moon detective agency offices
Minoru Yamasaki designed the twin Century Plaza Towers, the same architect behind the World Trade Center in New York. The towers were completed in 1975. The NBC series Remington Steele used an exterior shot of the towers as the title agency's office in nearly every episode from 1982 to 1987, and the ABC series Moonlighting opened its own episodes with the same towers as the Blue Moon Detective Agency from 1985 to 1989. In Escape from New York, the base of the towers stood in for the World Trade Center's own base. The video for Public Image Ltd's This Is Not a Love Song was shot throughout the towers in 1983.
9 to 5, 1980
The hotel's curved front
Played the hotel where Missy Hart stays
Minoru Yamasaki designed the hotel's curved facade too. It opened here in 1966 as the Century Plaza Hotel. The curved facade appears in the 1980 film 9 to 5, in a distant establishing shot and again from one of its balconies. The hotel closed for renovation in 2016 and reopened in 2021 as the Fairmont Century Plaza, with two residential towers added behind it.
Bunker Hill's freestanding office towers rise over sunken plazas and multi level parking, cleared for redevelopment the way Century City itself was built on cleared studio land. City National Plaza's twin fifty two story towers give the hill a similar twin office towers silhouette to the Century Plaza Towers. Bunker Hill's steep grades and the Angels Flight funicular are unmistakable in a wide shot, so keep the frame on the towers and plazas rather than the hillside streets below. Try searching twin office towers now.
Warner Center in Los Angeles, California
Warner Center Plaza's mirrored glass office towers stand freestanding over parking structures in the San Fernando Valley, the same isolated tower on a plaza layout as Century City. Its three towers are 1980s office buildings, close in age to Century City's own. Warner Center sits low against the Valley floor with mountains behind rather than Century City's own hillside backdrop toward Beverly Hills, so a wide establishing shot will give away the difference. Try searching mirrored glass office towers now.
South Coast Metro in Costa Mesa, California
South Coast Metro's Plaza Tower was designed by Cesar Pelli, the same architect behind Century City's own Medical Plaza. The glass tower stands freestanding over a flat Orange County suburb, farther from any hillside than Century City. Plaza Tower's stainless steel finish and the shopping center crowds nearby look different from Century City's quieter granite and glass towers, so a tight shot on a single tower face works better than a wide one. Try searching freestanding glass tower now.
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