Busted! Hotels where celebs go to hook up

3. The love nest: Dorchester Hotel, London
The players: Ralph Fiennes and Cornelia Crisan
The dish: Fiennes's love life was already plenty scandalous when he embarked on a dalliance at the swank Dorchester, long a hangout for celebs from Kate Moss to Victoria Beckham to Jennifer Lopez. After all, the Oscar-nominated actor had left his wife in 1995 for the actress Francesca Annis, 18 years his senior. (Now in her early 60s, Ms. Annis was famous for playing Elizabeth Taylor's handmaiden in “Cleopatra.”)

Seth Wenig / AP file

Fiennes and Annis seemed stable and happy for nine years — until the tempestuous night in February 2004 when Fiennes spotted Cornelia Crisan, a then 28-year-old Romanian singer, at the Dorchester bar. According to Crisan, the Oscar-nominated actor gave her his room number and arranged to meet upstairs.

They embarked on an affair that lasted until 2006, when Crisan spilled her guts to the tabloids and Fiennes separated from Annis. Crisan recalled that night of passion with crisp accuracy: Aretha Franklin songs, Champagne and instructions from Fiennes to remove all of her clothing except for her high heels — she said he routinely asked her to leave them on during their dalliances.

4. The love nest: The Beverly Hills Hotel, California
The players: Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy
The dish: Hollywood's most legendary love affair took place on the palm-studded grounds of the Beverly Hills Hotel. The hotel, of course, served as a clubhouse for the elite during Hollywood's Golden Age, hosting everyone from Howard Hughes to Greta Garbo to W. C. Fields.

Megastars Hepburn and Tracy, who met on the set of “Woman of the Year” and appeared in nine movies together, spent much of the 1940s and 1950s living like a married couple in Tracy's bungalow — despite the annoying fact that he was still legally married to his wife, who lived on their ranch in the Valley (and whom he never divorced).

It was often tumultuous, as a biography of Hepburn by A. Scott Berg recalls: Tracy once struck the actress in front of other guests, and Hepburn slept in the hallway outside the bedroom after Tracy kicked her out.

But generally life at the hotel seemed sunny: Hepburn took a tennis lesson at the hotel at 6 a.m. nearly every day, and she famously jumped into the pool with her clothes on after one morning class. Tracy spent afternoons playing polo with friends at Will Rogers's nearby ranch before retiring for cocktails in what became known, on account of such activities, as the hotel's Polo Lounge. And you thought Lindsay and Britney's louche lives were unique.

5. The love nest: The Parker Palm Springs, California
The players: Britney Spears and Adnan Ghalib
The dish: Train-wreck pop singer Britney Spears and her bizarro onetime companion, married 35-year-old paparazzo Adnan Ghalib, characterized their relationship as platonic. But how many platonic friends visit hotels together for a few hours in the middle of the night?

Lucas Jackson / Reuters Britney Spears had a five-hour "meeting" with photog and rumored lover Adnan Ghalib at the Parker in Palm Springs in January 2008.

Though the Parker in Palm Springs — with its riotous postmodern design and Versailles-like gardens — is hardly the kind of place with an hourly rate, these two treated it as such. In January 2008, they reportedly checked into a $1,200-a-night villa (with Britney wearing a black wig and dark sunglasses) at 2 a.m. and emerged five hours later.

What, pray tell, did the odd couple do to fill their short stay? Ghalib, who was quoted in Us Weekly months earlier saying “I'll get [Spears] sooner or later,” told the press that he merely comforted Britney, who was struggling with custody issues at the time. His tactics were apparently less than effective: Within 48 hours of their Parker visit Spears had the infamous psychotic breakdown that sent her to Cedars-Sinai in restraints.