Inside Overseas Homes Owned by Famous Faces

George Clooney Lake Como

GEORGE CLOONEY – LAKE COMO, ITALY

Most people dream of owning a summer home by a lake, perhaps a rural cottage somewhere within driving distance back into the city. However, if you’re George Clooney, you can afford to buy a lake-side mansion that sits next to Italy’s magnificent and jaw-droppingly expensive Lake Como.
 
Clooney has owned Villa Oleandra in the village of Laglio since 2002. A quiet spot on the western shore of the lake, the village is about as far removed from Hollywood as one could get. However, when Clooney’s in town the paparazzi descend upon the little village. In response, the city council has forbidden all non-residents of Laglio to go near the villa’s entrance.
 
The property itself boasts an illustrious European history and dates back to 1720. Prior to being Clooney’s Italian getaway, it was owned by the family of American politician and billionaire, Henry John Heinz III. The story goes that Clooney was touring the Alps on his Harley Davidson in 2001 when he got lost, stumbled upon the villa and immediately fell in love with it. He swiftly wrote a check for $10 million to make it his own and has since proceeded to host and entertain a slew of fellow A-Listers, including Cindy Crawford, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Michael Douglas and, maybe the starriest guests of all, the Obamas.
 
In 2004 Clooney purchased a second neighborhood home, an Art Nouveau residence called Villa Margherita. The two properties are accessible to each other via a bridge at Riva Soldino.

Tom Cruise W. Sussex

TOM CRUISE – WEST SUSSEX, ENGLAND

Tom Cruise has quite an affinity for British country estates. He purchased what’s known as the Rede Place estate near East Grinstead in West Sussex, about 30 miles outside London, with ex-wife Katie Holmes back in 2006 for somewhere around $4.75 million. He held on to the huge house until sometime after late 2015 — three years after their 2012 split — at which point he put the more-than-11,000-square-foot home up for sale at about $7.4 million.
 
Cruise has since sold the red brick manse for an unknown amount (some say it was purchased by Australian-English Peter Andre), but several U.K. publications have recently reported he’s is on the hunt for another U.K. spread in the same vicinity of his former residence, which is just a hop-skip-and-jump from Saint Hill Manor, the former home of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and now the Church of Scientology’s U.K. base. It was at Saint Hill Manor the blockbuster movie star holed up while filming the latest installment of the “Mission Impossible” franchise, which has been delayed due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

Angelina Jolie Richmond

ANGELINA JOLIE – RICHMOND, LONDON

If numerous media reports are to believed, Angelina Jolie is about to relocate with her gaggle of children to the leafy suburb of Richmond, in South West London. She’s actually familiar with the town, having lived in the area back in 2011 when she was still married to Brad Pitt and filming in the nearby area. If she does end up moving to Richmond, she might just be seeing stars like Mick Jagger, Pete Townsend, Tom Hardy and Colin Firth who also own homes in the posh suburb.

Neve Campbell Islington

NEVE CAMPBELL – ISLINGTON, LONDON

If any Canuck could live permanently in Europe, it would be Neve Campbell. The daughter of a Dutch yoga instructor and a Scottish drama teacher, Campbell is probably best known in the United States for the 1990s primetime hit show “Party of Five” and the “Scream” franchise. She most recently appeared in Netflix’s “House of Cards” and “Skyscraper” alongside Dwayne Johnson.

She initially set up house in Islington, North London, for five years with her now-ex-husband, British actor John Light. However, though she and Light divorced, she did not divorce London. Instead, stayed in Islington and now lives there with her British-American boyfriend, actor JJ Feild, and their two children.

Brad Pitt Angelina Jolie France

BRAD PITT AND ANGELINA JOLIE – CORRENS, FRANCE

Although Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have been involved in a bitter custody battle for the last four years, apparently the one thing the former spouses can somewhat agree on sharing is their sprawling, 35-bedroom property known as Chateau Miraval, in Correns, France. They bought the sprawling estate in 2008 for €45 million (about $67 million at the time). It even served as the site of their secret wedding. But, the happy times have faded and now even Chateau Miraval has become a source of contention. 

Despite their feuding, the Chateaux and the winery attached to it are still very close to their hearts. So much so that, along with their business partner, Marc Perrin, they’ve recently decided to release a new wine.

Taylor Swift Hampstead

TAYLOR SWIFT –  HAMPSTEAD, LONDON

Though she’s known for her classically American pop-country musical stylings, Taylor Swift has become something of an Anglophile. She’s been dating British actor Joe Alwyn for over three years and reportedly shacks up with him on and off in a spacious North London rental flat. The global superstar, who is worth over $300 million and owns more homes than cats have lives, has been seen out and about with her beau in pubs and restaurants around the posh neighborhood, and word on the celebrity real estate street is that Swift plans to add to her $100-million-plus property portfolio with the addition of a permanent residence in London.

Johnny Depp S.France

JOHNNY DEPP – SOUTH OF FRANCE

Currently embroiled in a seemingly never ending and increasingly nasty legal battle with ex-wife Amber Heard, Johnny Depp has been off loading his famously vast property portfolio as fast as Captain Jack Sparrow dispatches zombie pirates. Since discovering that he owed nearly $100 million in back taxes, bits and pieces of the actor’s portfolio have been sold off, including a handful of apartments atop downtown L.A.’s Eastern Columbia building.

One of the most difficult of his properties to jettison has been his French hameau, a village-like compound he owns in the South of France, about 17 miles from Saint Tropez. The 27-acre complex comprises over a dozen structures including a five-bedroom main house, six guest cottages — one of them a converted chapel, an artist studio and a laundry building. There’s even an authentic French bistro that serves as the estate’s defacto kitchen and dining room. And, to top it all off, there are two swimming pools.

The actor reportedly spent around $11 million in renovations since buying the complex almost a decade ago, and in 2016 he shocked many real estate experts when he re-listed the eccentric estate at an undisclosed price rumored to be around $55 million, a whopping $30 million more than the roughly $26 million he’d priced it a year earlier. The property was then taken off the market at the end of 2017.

In addition to his French estate and a cluster of home’s above L.A.’s Sunset Strip, Depp also owns a three-island property in the Bahamas that is known as Pond Clay and for which he paid $2.2 million in 2004.

Lenny Kravitiz Paris, Brazil, Bahamas

LENNY KRAVITIZ — THE BAHAMAS, PARIS, RIO DE JANEIRO 

Lenny Kravitz may have been raised in New York and L.A., but he no longer owns a residence in the United States. When the ex-pat’s not filling stadiums, the perennially cool dreadlocked rocker and actor has made a costly habit out of living life on the road and staying at his glamorous if sometimes off-the-beaten-path homes.

He purchased his ultra-chic Paris townhome, tucked down a secluded street of the tony 16th arrondissement, way back in the early ‘90s. Since then, the elegant home has been given a signature Kravitz make-over — think edgy glamour, rich fabrics and eye-catching artworks. And, when he’s not using it, he occasionally rents out the high-glam crash pad at prices as high as $200K/month.

Last year he unveiled his 1,000 acre Brazilian estate, a former coffee plantation just outside of Rio De Janeiro, in Architectural Digest, describing it as “a place to unplug, reset your life, and take the time to be quiet and actually hear yourself.”

Equipped with the most spartan of supplies, Lenny’s other residence isn’t quite so lavish but is still magnificently dreamy: an Airstream trailer parked on a secluded beach on the slender, 112-mile long island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas. He has also set up a full-scale recording studio that is only a few hundred sandy feet away.