Now shacked up in Newark, N.J., with her high-profile politico paramour, New Jersey Senator (and former presidential hopeful) Cory Booker, New York City-born and -bred actor Rosario Dawson has sold off her Los Angeles bachelorette pad for a tad under $2.28 million. Just a notch below the $2.345 million asking price, the sale price of the Marina Del Rey residence is still profitably above the slightly more than $1.83 million that was paid for the property not quite 5.5 years ago.
Dawson found showbiz noteriety somewhat accidentally as an East Village teenager in Larry Clark and Harmony Korines’ controversial 1995 film “Kids,” a precursor to bare-knuckled teen dramas like HBO’s “Euphoria.” Since then, she’s appeared in a slew of important indie films and a handful of blockbusters, Spike Lee’s “25th Hour,” the film adaptation of “Rent” and “Men in Black II” among them. More recently she starred in (and produced) the short-lived TV series “Briarpatch,” and next up for Dawson are lead roles in Ana DuVernay’s upcoming dystopian HBO Max minseries “DMZ” and a starring role in the Hulu miniseries “Dopesick,” based on journalist Beth Macy’s bestselling 2018 nonfiction book, “Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors and the Drug Company that Addicted America.”
Cleared of personal belongings and staged for selling with a truckload of banal, mostly white furniture, the just short of 2,600-square-foot residence, a generically unremarkable mid-1990s potpourri of Mediterranean styles that is somewhat obscured by trees and enviably located just under a mile from the beach, stands three stories tall alongside a heavily trafficked road with three bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms. Though it was painted inside and out, the wood floors replaced, the landscaping refreshed and a small roof terrace optimized, the property is otherwise mostly unchanged since Dawson bought it.
A low stone wall topped by wood fencing, which helps to shield the entry from the traffic streaming by, forms a tiny courtyard outside the front door that opens unceremoniously directly into the living room where a full wall of bookshelves cleverly makes use of a circular cut out to accommodate its awkward placement next to a small window. Pale, wide-plank wood floors flow from the living room into a separate dining space that features a fireplace and glass sliders to the yard. The room flows easily into a nicely equipped and inoffensively neutral U-shaped kitchen fitted like who knows how many hundreds of thousands of kitchens across the country with bright white raised-paned cabinetry, dark gray countertops and gleaming medium-grade stainless steel appliances.
Upstairs, a pair of guest bedrooms share a ceramic-tiled Jack ‘n’ Jill bathroom, while the primary suite offers a fireplace and a slim private balcony with an up-close view of the sinuous bike path that runs along the edge of the marina behind the house. A walk-in closet is complemented by an ample dressing area with built-in full-length mirror, and the good-sized if fairly ordinary travertine-tiled bathroom includes a jetted garden tub as well as a glass-enclosed shower.
The carpeted stairs continue up to the third floor landing where, in addition to a nook with a raised platform that might make a nice spot to read or nap, there’s a split half bathroom in which the sink and toilet are in adjacent but separate spaces. Just outside the bulkhead, a chic and strikingly contemporary roof deck provides verdant greenbelt views while strategically placed bamboo screens ensure privacy from passing cars and neighboring homes.
Given its proximity to a busy road that runs right to the beach, the backyard is no-doubt inundated with traffic noise. And, given the property’s miniscule parcel size of right under one-tenth-of-an-acre, it’s unsurprising the checkmark-shaped backyard is on the compact side. Nonetheless, the petite space manages to comfortably accommodate a dining terrace outside the kitchen, a patch of grass alongside a row of towering Eucalyptus, and a long, slender plunge pool with a slightly raised circular spa fed by a fountain that pours out of a tiled wall.
The property was co-listed with Aaron Bernbach and Devin McNichol of Rodeo Realty. The buyers were repped by Kate Kennedy at Heyler Realty.
Though she only moved in with Sen. Booker last summer, Dawson actually turned her real estate attentions to the east a full year earlier; Tax records show that in the fall of 2019 she plunked down almost $540,000 for two secluded homes on 25 thickly wooded acres about 80 miles northwest of Midtown Manhattan in a pretty though mostly hardscrabble area of the Catskills colloquially known as the Borscht Belt due to the area’s many nowadays largely defunct summer resorts and bungalow colonies that catered primarily to Jewish vacationers from the 1920s to the 1960s.