About Offscreen Tourist
Meet Rebecca
Founder & Editor
Welcome to Offscreen Tourist! I’m Rebecca, your movie travel guide. I write filming location guides, share film festival tips, and recommend wanderlust-inspiring movies for fellow film and TV-obsessed travellers.
I founded the original website (when it was known as Almost Ginger) back in 2014. Two of my biggest passions were films and travel. Over a decade later, they still are!
Since 2014, I’ve visited hundreds of filming locations around the world, attended dozens of film festivals, and watched an endless number of travel movies and TV shows.
I became an expert on screen tourism (or film tourism, set-jetting, whatever you want to call it!) before it was a cool travel trend.
This website is a one-woman show and I am said woman behind everything you see here. The content, photography, web design, logo design, emails, and newsletters are all my doing – for better or worse!
Want to know more about my story, qualifications, and the trip I took at 14 years old which sparked my love of film-induced travel? Keep reading!
My Story
I was born and bred in a small town outside the Lake District National Park in Northwest England.
As a diehard theatre kid, I took part in countless school plays. I even wrote a pantomime and cast myself as the lead (big Main Character Energy) and auditioned for Saoirse Ronan’s role in the movie Hanna (2011).
It’s fortunate that I wasn’t cast because she’s nowhere now. Ah hem. But it was also around the same time that I purposefully visited my first-ever filming location.
On a family trip to London, my parents, big sister, and I traipsed through Kensington Gardens looking for the Peter Pan Statue from the Mary-Kate and Ashley movie Winning London (2001).
This trip inspired two further family holidays to Paris and Rome. Yes, Mary-Kate and Ashley also released films set in those cities, why do you ask?
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At aged 18, I moved out of my hometown to study for a BA (Hons) in Drama and Screen Studies at the University of Manchester.
My love of movies grew into a huge passion. I enjoyed writing about film, discussing film, and learning all about the art and history of film.
It was during my first year of university that I attended my very first film festival: Berlinale. I’d never been around so many film lovers and it was so exciting. I returned four years later!
I spent a transformative summer as a camp counsellor and theatre director in Pennsylvania, USA. During those three months, I caught the travel bug hard. I worked at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival the next year.
After graduating, I secured a job in corporate video production. While initially pleased to have found a role in the industry, I realised the cutthroat world of TV and film production wasn’t for me.
I left Manchester after six years and moved home. I worked hard on this website and tried on a couple of different career paths for size between travelling and volunteering around Europe.
While English as a Foreign Language Teacher and Theatre Technician didn’t stick, freelance travel and film content writing did.
I spent the latter half of my twenties freelance writing and visiting tonnes of filming locations around the UK and Europe.
Except for a big trip to Thailand and road-tripping across the Canadian Rockies, of course! Visiting the beach from The Beach (2000) and exploring Banff and Jasper National Parks were two bucket-list moments.
Some other stand-out filming locations that I visited during this time include the Glenfinnan Viaduct from the Harry Potter movies and the iconic Vienna locations in Before Sunrise (1995).
I also attended lots of film festivals in the UK and Europe. Obtaining a pass for Cannes Film Festival, as you’d expect, was a huge highlight.
Around the pandemic, I spent a lot of time in Scotland, particularly Edinburgh. It’s probably my favourite city in the world.
Sometime during the last year of my twenties, I realised that I worked 100% remotely. It was this epiphany that led me to apply for something I’d always wanted to do: a master’s programme. But first, I had to celebrate my 30th birthday…
Countries Visited: 23
US States Visited: 10 (+DC)
Because I love romanticising my life, I booked a month in Northern Italy to celebrate this milestone. I was a Secretary of Juliet in Verona for one week and visited every location from Call Me By Your Name (2017).
E.M. Forster’s novel A Room with a View inspired me to spend my special day in Florence. Little did I know that I would meet a lovely Californian man in a hostel there.
We fell in love and I started an MA in Creative Writing at Queen’s University Belfast a few months later. I visited him in the US, and he came to Ireland where he proposed to me on the banks of Glendalough.
What’s next?
I’ve since graduated, published short stories, and I’m working on my first novel.
And yes, I’m knee-deep in the lengthy process of joining him in Utah and getting hitched!
I’m so excited about exploring the USA (10 states and counting…) and, of course, attending more film festivals and hunting film locations across the pond.
Ten Random Facts
- My favourite book is The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood but my current most-read book is Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I became a bookworm in adulthood and read at least 52 books every year.
- I once spent seven nights in a Cold War bunker in the Czech Republic. Breakfast was free and they served homemade gingerbread; what’s a girl to do?
- If I could obtain citizenship for any country in the world right now, it would be Denmark.
- I love multi-day hikes and have completed Hadrian’s Wall Path and St Cuthbert’s Way. Both John Muir trails are on my list, as is part of the Via Francigena in Italy.
- Thanks to my favourite filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, I’m half-heartedly attempting to learn Spanish.
- Lighthouses are a random obsession. I love photographing them and want to create a gallery wall of only lighthouses.
- I currently have two tattoos. One is a Bob Dylan lyric with forget-me-not flowers. The second is a thistle, Scotland’s national flower.
- Ever since I was a teen, I’ve loved country music. I hope to learn to line dance someday.
- I came out as bisexual during the pandemic. Being unapologetically queer and supporting the entire LGBTQ+ community is so important to me.
- My favourite films? Well, my all-time N.1 is When Harry Met Sally (1989). I think it’s perfect. Others include Rear Window (1954), Only Yesterday (1991), Talk To Her (2002), Before Sunset (2004), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), and Call Me By Your Name (2017).