Celebrity Playground

You never know whom you will see at the next dinner table in Jamaica. Celebrities, heads of state and European royals often slip in under the paparazzi radar for vacations at luxury hotels and villas throughout the island.

New resorts such as Geejam in the lovely seaside town of Port Antonio, where actor and playboy Errol Flynn brought famous friends, are attracting a new generation of stars such as Gwen Stefani, Bjork and India.Arie who record in the resort’s studio.

English actress Emma Thompson brings her family to Round Hill Hotel and Villas in Montego Bay, and actress Emma Watson also takes friends to the resort. Actor Ewan McGregor and his family are regulars, and Sir Paul McCartney and his children have been frequent visitors at Round Hill for many years, often spending Christmas there.

They are following in the footsteps of luminaries from the 1940s and ’50s such as Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, who often played Round Hill bar’s piano. John Gielgud recited Shakespeare on the beach. The stories are legend. Fashion designer Ralph Lauren and Robert Pittman, former president of America Online, each bought two villas at Round Hill. Lauren designed the public spaces and the guestrooms of the elegant inn.

Half Moon Resort also has an illustrious guest list including Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, Winston Churchill, and Princess Margaret. More recent guests include Paul Simon, Patti LaBelle, David Bowie and his wife, Iman, and Kenny Rogers.

At the villa resort of GoldenEye, former home of Ian Fleming who wrote a dozen of his James Bond books here, guests plant trees with a donation going to the Oracabessa Foundation. Pierce Brosnan planted a mango tree, Harrison Ford a lime tree, and former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton planted royal palms.

At nearby Blue Harbour, once the home of Noel Coward before he moved to Firefly, guests can sleep in the same modest cottages once occupied by Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, James Mason, Laurence Olivier, and Alec Guinness.

But famous or not, everyone comes to Jamaica for the same reasons: glorious blue water, white-sand beaches, soaring green mountains, and welcoming people who, truth be told, are not really impressed by fame.