After less than two months on the market, entertainment industry hyphenate James Franco, director, producer and star of the critically acclaimed bio-dramedy “The Disaster Artist,” sold his two-residence micro-compound above L.A.’s Silver Lake for $1.35 million. An aggressive bidding war drove the sale price to more than 40% above its $949,000 asking price and almost twice the $775,000 Franco paid for the property in August 2012.
The property comprises two small, detached Andalusian-style bungalows cleaved to a hillside above a street-level one-car garage and a separate two-car car port. The smaller, lower unit, atop the enclosed garage, has one bedroom, one vintage tiled bathroom, an eat-in kitchen with original cabinetry and Saltillo floor tiles and a living room with a hardwood floors, a handsome Palladian window and a slim balcony that overlooks the street.
A long, glute-firming exterior stairway passes a roomy terrace atop the two-car carport as it climbs the hillside to the larger residence, a charmingly quirky three-story villa with one and potentially two bedrooms and two bathrooms plus an office/art studio with exterior entry. A slender living room with wood beamed ceiling and time-worn Saltillo floor tiles is open to the compact but smartly arranged kitchen that’s fitted with butcher block counter tops. There’s a tiny laundry room and bathroom tucked behind the kitchen and a slim stairwell divides the living/kitchen from an ample dining room that opens through French doors to the terraced gardens behind the house. Upstairs the bedroom has an open, over-the-treetops view, a decorative white brick fireplace and an unexpectedly spacious walk-in closet/dressing room. A small sunroom is convertible to a pint-sized second bedroom and there’s also a compact hall bathroom. A small loggia outside the main bedroom has exterior stairs to a penthouse level office/art studio with wood-trimmed casement windows that provide open, westerly views over the Silver Lake reservoir towards the Griffith Park Observatory.
Franco was represented in the sale by Andrew Morrison of Redwood Real Estate Brokerage and the buyer by Imraan Ali at Compass.
The always busy as a beaver “127 Hours” Oscar nominee, who has more than a dozen projects in various stages of production including the historical drama “The Mad Whale,” the comedy-drama “Zeroville” and the Coen brothers western-themed TV mini-series “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” previously owned a 1920s Mediterranean villa directly across the street from the ever-chic Chateau Marmont Hotel that he snapped up in 2006 for $2.35 million and sold in early 2010 for $3.3 million.
