The historic and fancifully turned out Los Angeles home of Brit actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson and YBA artist/filmmaker Sam Taylor-Johnson, in the foothills just above Hollywood, has come to market at close to $7.5 million.
The “Kick-Ass” and “Avengers” franchise star and the “Nowhere Boy” (2009) director, tapped to direct (and produce) the upcoming bio-drama “Rothko,” an adaptation of Lee Seldes’ 1978 book “The Legacy of Mark Rothko,” in which her husband will have a prominent role as well as a producer’s credit, bought the enviably secluded hillside home just over eight years ago for a dollop under $4.4 million.
Designed by set decorator Harry McFee, completed in 1926 and done up in eye-catching style for the Taylor-Johnsons by the fashionable and celeb-favored design duo Pierce & Ward, the approximately 5,500-square-foot Mediterranean villa sits high and privately above a pin-drop-quiet cul-de-sac near the base of Runyon Canyon with a total of seven bedrooms and six bathrooms between the main house and a self-contained guest or staff apartment.
Obscured in a cumulous tangle of trees that make the house all but invisible atop a towering stucco rampart, the three-plus story home is updated with the conveniences required of a modern-day lifestyle yet retains much of its quaint and idiosyncratic original charm. For example, listings held by Bret Parsons and Aaron Montelongo at Compass reveal the street-level two-car garage includes new-fangled electric recharging ports as well as a secure passage to the kitchen two floors above.
It’s a bit of a hike up from the street via a gated, terra-cotta tiled exterior stairway that climbs up through dense plantings and across a lush expanse of emerald lawn to the handsomely adorned and vine enhanced front door set into a three-story turret. The red tile roof and ivory colored stucco exterior showcases Maya blue trim work around the windows and French doors.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com The home’s adventuresome, devil-may-care mixy-match panopoly of bold wallpapers, vintage furnishings and lush jewel-toned fabrics comes together in a luscious stew that is equal parts Old Hollywood glamour, globe-trotting exotica and grandma-chic-style eclecticism in the living room, where a huge Harland Miller painting of an oversized book cover adds art-world gravitas.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com An antique partners desk floats beneath a spherical light fixture in the center of the study that showcases a vibrantly colored Damien Hirst spin painting.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com Up to date with chef-grade culinary accouterment, the eat-in kitchen flows into a spacious and surprisingly subdued family room that, in turn, spills out to a courtyard garden with a multi-tiered fountain at its center. The main floor is completed by a guest or staff bedroom and nearby bathroom.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com Four second-floor guest bedrooms share two retro-inspired but fully updated bathrooms. Two of the bedrooms have city views and the other two, one of which is furnished as a glamorous den with a pink velvet sofa and a mirrored credenza below a wall-mounted flat-screen TV, lead out to the swimming pool.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com The city-view main bedroom includes a large dressing room and an updated bathroom with an oval window above the marble-topped makeup vanity.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com A corkscrew staircase winds up into the turret that tops the foyer two floors below, while a discrete lower-level guest/staff apartment offers an exterior entrance, a bathroom and a kitchenette. A trio of French doors open the spacious room, which the Taylor-Johnsons outfitted as a rubber-matted fitness and yoga studio, to a terra-cotta paved private terrace.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com A two-story tree house adds romance and charm to the grassy yard at the front of the house, and a craftily engineered plunge-sized swimming pool was added to a terrace notched into the hill behind the house.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com It’s a long, thigh-burning and glute-firming climb up the steep hillside behind the house to an elevated terrace that, in addition to sweeping views over the city, offers a barrel-shaped freestanding sauna for sweating out toxins and a claw-footed tub for alfresco soaking.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com The property was owned in the early 1990s by late music industry executive Miles Copeland Jr., who later purchased a neighboring estate now owned by Australian film composer Harald Kloser and once home to legendary late actor Raymond Burr, star of the iconic 1950s and ‘60s series “Perry Mason” and “Ironside.” Some of the other homes in the immediate vicinity are owned by English film and TV director Rupert Wainwright, the estate of late actor Sondra Locke and Emmy- and Oscar-winning film and TV writer/director/producer Alan Ball, who bought his 10-acre multi-residence compound in late 2014 for almost $11.1 million from Sheryl Crow.