Art collecting film financier Roeg Sutherland, youngest son of Hollywood legend Donald Sutherland and French actor Francine Racette, recently sold his former home in the Hollywood Hills for about $4.2 million, and well-informed word on the celebrity real estate street is that the new owners are preggers “High School Musical” star Ashley Tisdale and film/TV composer Christopher French.
Secreted totally out of view down a long, gated driveway in a historic neighborhood in the foothills above Hollywood, the exterior of the 1920s white-stucco and red-tile-roofed Mediterranean villa belies streamlined contemporary interiors designed by Mandy Graham to showcase the CAA Media Finance co-head’s vast and playfully colorful collection of artworks and ephemera.
Restrained and sophisticated with blindingly white walls and lustrous white epoxy flooring throughout the main floor living spaces, the just over 4,300-square-foot home has three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms. The expansive living room has an austere fireplace at its center, and French doors at one end of the lengthy, sunlight-filled room open to spacious dining and lounging deck picturesquely enveloped in the surrounding treetops. A naughtily suggestive Ingo Maurer light fixture hangs over the table in the dining room, and the sleek and minimalist kitchen is warmed up with custom wood cabinets and a bespoke island snack bar with cleverly designed storage compartments.
An oversized screening room discreetly tucked under the main living spaces spills out through a wall of windows to a tree house-like terrace, while double pocket doors in the second-floor principal bedroom slip into the walls to reveal a meticulously tailored bathroom with a large TV positioned above the soaking tub and a separate shower sheathed in marble tiles.
With a quiet alfresco dining courtyard alongside to the house, the beautifully landscaped grounds are enviably secluded and offer a wooden barrel sauna nestled up against a towering stand of bamboo and a two-lane Olympic-length saltwater swimming pool with serene and stunning canyon, mountain and city views.
The listing was held by Jenna Cooper and Caroline Wolf of Compass, while Tisdale and French were repped in the transaction by Anthony Paradise at Sotheby’s Int’l Realty.
Sutherland has moved on to a boldly renovated midcentury home in the swank Windsor Square area he picked up last year for $5.3 million, while Tisdale and Frenchs’ soon-to-be-former home in the Los Feliz area is already in escrow after it lickety-split received at least three offers in the week or so after it was set out for sale earlier this month at almost $5.8 million.