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.