The children will recall that Mister Pattinson, now four months or so past his painfully protracted and tabloid-documented break up with his fame-hating co-star Kristen Stewart, acquired the property just over two years ago, in late August 2011, for $6,275,000 according to property records.
The Spanish Colonial-style house, all but hidden from the street behind high walls and dense foliage, has three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms, according to Patty Propertyseller, in just over 4,000 square feet. The 1.45 acre estate has a bifurcated flag stone motor court at the front and an extensive outdoor living space at the back that gives way to a steeply up-sloping and ludicrously high-maintenance terraced gardens at the back that include several shaded terraces, a tangle of winding stairways, a free-form swimming pool, and, for impromptu concerts (or whatever), an amphitheatre.
The Stiles O. Clements-designed house** was built in the early 1920s for an insurance executive and has a long history of Hollywood-y owners. British actor Tim Curry bought the property in 1993 for $650,000, gave it a thorough fix-up and had it photographed for the November 1998 issue of Architectural Digest. Mister Curry, who told Los Angeles magazine in 2000 that the gardens required a full-time gardener plus a garden consultant on retainer, sold the house in July 2000 for exactly $3,000,000 to a non-celebrity who quickly flipped it at a significant loss for $2.6 million to actor Noah Wylie of E.R. fame and fortune. A few short years later Mister Wylie sold the house for $3.325 million to three-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson (Hugo, The Aviator, JFK) who flipped it less than two years later to a Australian-born movie director Robert Luketic (Legally Blonde, Monster-in-Law, 21) who held on to it until the fall of 2011 when he was sold to Mister Pattinson. Would any of the children like to take bets on whether the property will be acquired by yet another Tinseltown mover and shaker?
Some of the other homes in the immediate vicinity are owned by Emmy-winning writer/producer Jenji Kohan (Weeds, Orange Is the New Black), sit-com star and outspoken Scientologist Kirstie Alley (Cheers, Fat Actress) and the rock star Flea, a.k.a. Michael Balzary of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
The children may recall that, according to numerous sources with whom Your Mama is acquired and who tend to know these sorts of things, Mister Pattinson decamped some time ago to much less sublime rented macmansion in a guard-gated and celebrity-friendly community off Mulholland Drive in the mountains between Beverly Hills and Studio City.
Word to the wise: Any of you Twihards who think it might be cute to roll by Mister Pattinson's pad in your Hondas and Hyundais should know that even though object of your obsessive fascination moved out some time ago you can be assured the property remains secured by a Fort Knox-like security system and (probably) a team of vigilant armed guards who would rather remove your liver with their bare hands than allow you to stand in the street to gawk like dopes and scream like tween-aged—or, worse, middle-aged—Mimis.
*This turn of celebrity real estate events didn't come as much of a surprise to this particular property gossip who heard word last week from another informant that one of L.A.'s' most prolific and successful property stagers was brought in to gussy the place up.
**Stiles O. Clements designed both the Mayan and El Capitan theaters in Los Angeles as well as the swim-gym at Beverly Hills High School and, coincidentally, a 1915 English Tudor mansion on 2.5 acres in Pasadena (CA) that was used as the location for a prom in the first Twilight movie and traded hands last December (2012) for $5.8 million.
exterior and aerial images: Google
