Disney Hall: the shapely movie star

YOU may well have seen Walt Disney Concert Hall as a background for car commercials and fashion photographs as well as for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Now it’s going to be part of an action movie due out in the fall and starring Anthony Hopkins. Directed by Gregory Hoblit, “Fracture” casts Hopkins as a man who tries to shoot his wife and, in a cat-and-mouse game with an assistant D.A. (Ryan Gosling), is set free on a series of technicalities.

But between thrills, Gosling and a character played by Rosamund Pike attend a recital in Disney Hall sung by mezzosoprano Vivica Genaux, who was Gluck’s Orfeo for Los Angeles Opera in 2003. In the sequence, Genaux is shown singing an aria from Riccardo Broschi’s 1730 opera “Idaspe.”

The Los Angeles Music Center -- of which Disney Hall is a part -- makes about $100,000 a year from such filming, says center production manager John Vassiliou.

“We do maybe three or four shoots a month, on the average, mostly interiors and exteriors of Disney Hall or on the plaza,” Vassiliou says. “We’ve had shoots for print ads, catalog ads. Victoria’s Secret was here yesterday and will be back at the end of the month. Hallmark was here for a commercial. All the big American car manufacturers.... “

“Fracture” isn’t the first movie to use Disney Hall, Vassiliou says. That honor went to “After the Sunset,” a 2004 jewel-thief thriller directed by Brett Ratner and starring Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek.

According to Music Center spokeswoman Catherine Babcock, the money goes into the center’s general fund.

-- Chris Pasles