BUYER: Ryan MurphySELLER: Charlize Theron and Stuart Townsend
LOCATION: Malibu, CA
PRICE: $6,562,500
SIZE: 2,095 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It seems television and movie writer/producer/director Ryan Murphy is starting to make a real estate habit of buying the historic homes of Oscar winning actresses.
Much to the chagrin of some righty-tighties Mister Murphy, a former journalist, has created some of the gayest and most homoerotic programs ever to air on the tee-vee (Glee, Nip/Tuck and Popular) as well as several screenplays that include the Julia Roberts vehicle Eat Pray Love and the movie adaption of Augusten Burroughs' high-larious and disturbing memoir Running With Scissors, which, all due respect, was a much better book than movie.
Your Mama has for weeks been getting dribs and drabs about Mister Murphy's recent real estate doings and just yesterday finally received the hard core confirmation and specific information we sought for from our wonderfully helpful informant Lucy Spillerguts. Yesterday, while discussing the real estate matters of an different actor and his supermodel wife, ol' Lucy whispered in our celebrity real estate craving ear that Mister Murphy just bought Oscar winning actress Charlize Theron's Malibu, CA beach house.
The last few years have been exceptionally lucrative for forty-something year old Mister Murphy and his shooting star has enabled him to purchase a ticket on Mr. Toad's Celebrity Real Estate Wild Ride. In May of 2001 Mister Murphy bought a Carl Maston-designed house discreetly tucked up in the hills behind the perennially fab Chateau Marmont Hotel. It's not known what he paid but based on our research Your Mama believes it was somewhere around two million bigguns. His real estate foot first became itchy in May 2008 when he first put his contemporary crib on the block with an asking price of $4,195,000. Finally, nearly three long year's later according to property records, Mister Murphy sold the wood, glass and concrete residence in early April 2011 for $2,775,000.
In September of 2010, more than six months before he sold his white elephant in the hills, Mister Murphy possessed the financial chutzpah to splash out $10,000,000 to acquire a fully restored, updated and upgraded Ralph Flewelling-designed Colonial Revival-style mansion in Beverly Hills, CA. The 8,434 square foot mansion, originally built in 1927, contains 7 bedroom and 9 bathrooms and was sold by Oscar-winning actress Diane Keaton (Annie Hall, Marvin's room, Something's Gotta Give), a well-known flipper of high-end architecturally significant houses in southern California.
With his in-town residence taken care of, Mister Murphy soon went a-shopping for a house in Malibu. Mister Murphy eventually settled on the petite but pricey beach front house of Academy Award winner and Christian Dior stink water spokes model Charlize Theron (North Country, Monster, The Italian Job). Records (and Redfin) show the property was purchased for the complicated price of $6,562,500.
Miss Theron purchased her ocean front residence in late 2001 for $2,200,000. About 18 months later she added the name of her then man-friend–far less successful Irish-born actor Stuart Townsend (Queen of the Damned, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen)–to the deed.
In early 2010, on the still-warm heels of their bust up, Miss Theron and Mister Townsend put their ocean front getaway on the rental market at $30,000 per month. Towards the end of the year the erstwhile lovebirds of nine or so years officially put their modestly-scaled but still quite expensive beach house on the open market with an asking price of $7,500,000. In late March 2011, just before Mister Murphy swooped in and scooped the place up for $6,562,500, the asking price was dropped to $6,995,000.
Listing information shows the house was originally built in 1930 and measures just 2,095 square feet. That's practically a doll house compared to the steroidal real estate standards of the super rich today but–at least as far Your Mama is concerned–plenty big enough for a beach getaway just 25 or so miles from Miss Theron's primary Los Angeles residence in the the star-choked Outpost Estates neighborhood and just 17 or 18 miles from Mister Murphy's mansion in Bev Hills.
A tight two-car garage–where the washer and dryer are located–faces often traffic-clogged Pacific Coast Highway. An alarmed key-lock gate opens into a narrow walled courtyard that runs along the house and wraps around to the ocean side deck that hovers over the sand and includes fire pit, hot tub and shade-making structure with vibrant and magnificent tangerine-colored fabric panels that can be opened or closed depending on the amount of direct sun desired.
The house contains 3 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms. One of the bedrooms has a private entrance from the courtyard near the front gate and the cozy second-floor master bedroom has a vaulted ceiling, hardwood floors, wood-burning fireplace, built-in book shelves and a sparkling view of the ocean. The attached bathroom features double sinks, soaking tub in front of ocean view window and a glass-enclosed shower.
Glammy jewel tone colors and luscious tactile fabrics infuse the charming and otherwise unpretentiously-scaled beach shack with Hollywood a-lister goes to the the Bu style. The main living spaces include a water-side living room with stone fireplace and bay window with built-in banquette seating, a supermodel slim dining room with built-in banquette seating, a petite but well-equipped u-shaped kitchen with open shelving and and a glassed-in loggia-lounge where sliding glass doors integrate the interior areas with the party-sized deck that overlooks the sand and sea.
A number of nearby homes are owned (and sometimes occupied) by famous folks including itty-bitty and very busy actor Stephen Dorff who owns the boxy contemporary next door and comedian and celebrity poon hound David Spade whose spread is margarita mix (and/or condom) borrowing distance. A short stroll down the sand is Tinseltown widow Candy Spelling's two-parcel seaside pad and a bit further along is the Shabby Chic glitzorama that is Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne's long-unwanted Malibu residence they've have up for lease and/or on the market for about as long as Your Mama has had teeth.
Your Mama wonders, children: Are his two L.A. houses that combined cost him more than $16,000,000–plus a hillside house in Laguna Beach (CA) with panoramic coastal view–enough satiate Mister Murphy's real estate appetite or will he continue to snap up prime properties in other celebrity magnets like, say, Aspen and New York City? Maybe something in the Hamptons? Nothing screams entertainment industry success and real estate excess more than houses in Malibu and the Hamptons, right?
listing photos: Coldwell Banker / Beverly Hills North
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