The hotel became famous as a favourite of many of the world's best known movie stars and writers, with luxurious suites named for some of its most notable patrons. These include Ernest Hemingway (for whom a bar in the hotel was named) F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marcel Proust, Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Maurice Chevalier, Jean-Paul Sartre, Elton John, plus couturier Coco Chanel who made the Ritz her home for more than thirty years.

In Billy Wilder's 1957 comedy, Love in the Afternoon, Audrey Hepburn flirts with Gary Cooper in his suite in the hotel. Hepburn was back nearly ten years later, in 1966, to film How to Steal a Million, this time playing her romantic scene with Peter O'Toole in front of the hotel.

Paris was a recurring location in many of Audrey' Hepburn's movies and apparently it was her favorite place to film.

Other movies which use The Ritz as a backdrop include The Man Who Lived At The Ritz, in which Phillip Weber and Joss Ackland stay at the hotel during WWII; The Da Vinci Code, where the protagonist Robert Langdon, stays at the hotel while in Paris. In The Devil Wears Prada the magazine team stay at the hotel while in Paris for fashion week.