84 Charing Cross Road is a 1987 drama film directed by David Jones, and starring Anne Bancroft, Anthony Hopkins, Judi Dench, Mercedes Ruehl, and Jean De Baer. It is executive produced by Bancroft's husband, Mel Brooks. The screenplay by Hugh Whitemore is based on a play by James Roose-Evans, which itself is an adaptation of the 1970 epistolary memoir of the same name by Helene Hanff — a compilation of letters between Hanff and Frank Doel dating from 1949 to 1968. Several characters who are not in the play were added for the film, including Hanff's Manhattan friends and Doel's wife Nora.

The film garnered mainly positive reviews from critics, as well as receiving numerous industry awards and nominations. Bancroft won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her portrayal of Hanff. Additionally, Dench was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and Whitemore for Best Adapted Screenplay. Dench has said that 84 Charing Cross Road is one of her favourite films in which she has appeared. The film has become something of a cult classic among bibliophiles and epistemophiles.

In 1971, New Yorker Helene Hanff is on an airplane heading for London. She is on a promotional tour for her book 84 Charing Cross Road which is about her 20-year correspondence with a secondhand bookshop specializing in out-of-print books.

By the time Helene arrives in London, the book shop has permanently closed, but she still visits it. To the sound of hammering and a builder's radio, Hanff recalls the first letter she wrote to the shop in 1949.

As a flashback, at a bookstore in 1949 in New York City, Hanff seeks obscure British literary classics. Frustrated after entering yet a fourth book shop without the books she seeks, she buys a copy of the Saturday Review of Literature. In it, she finds an advertisement placed by antiquarian booksellers Marks & Co, located at the titular address in London. She contacts the shop, where chief buyer and manager Frank Doel fulfills her requests.

Over time, a long-distance friendship develops between Hanff and Doel and also the other staff members; even Doel's wife corresponds with Hanff. In gratitude for their extraordinary service, Hanff begins sending small gifts: holiday packages and food parcels to compensate for post–war food shortages in Britain as she has learned from a British neighbour a way to send food from Denmark relatively inexpensively.

Cecily sneaks off a private letter to Helene, although asks her not to let Frank know, as she senses he might consider it to be improper and that he views her as his private correspondent. She says they all speculate as to what she is like, so requests a photo. In this way, Helene gets some detail as what Frank is like, sweet but married. Helene likewise sends Cecily a private letter. A non college graduate, she lives in and works from a brownstone studio apartment, editing and writing scripts.

Correspondence between Helene and Frank includes discussions about topics as diverse as the sermons of John Donne, how to make Yorkshire pudding, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the coronation of Elizabeth II. As time goes on, as they get to know one another, he senses which books that come in would interest her.