Ben Stiller sold it over the summer of 2011 for $7.325 million to Jason Statham, and the English action/thriller flick staple sold it almost exactly four years later for $9.2 million to its current owner, famously well-compensated sitcom star Johnny Galecki. And, now, anyone with $45,000 a month to spend on a year long furnished lease — not to mention the $135,000 deposit — can live like a Tinseltown A-Lister in the showbiz saturated Hollywood Hills home.
The Belgium-born actor, who dropped out of school after the eight grade, starred in “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”(1989) opposite Hollywood legends Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo and got his feet in the primetime sitcom door with the 1990s series “Billy” and “Roseanne” before he became one of the highest paid television actors on the planet who pulled down around $900,000 per episode on the final years of his twelve season run as nerdily bespectacled experimental physicist Leonard Hofstadter on “The Big Bang Theory.”
Available through Hilton & Hyland agent Brett Lawyer, the gorgeously maintained and stylishly appointed 1920s Spanish compound, a hidden oasis painstakingly and expensively restored, updated and expanded for Stiller by the powerhouse design studio Roman & Williams, spreads out over about half an acre of lushly planted grounds. Oozing with relaxed glamour, the just over 5,300-square-foot compound offers a total of five bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms between the three-bedroom main house and two-bedroom guesthouse.
Electronic driveway gates swing open to a brick-paved motor court and two car garage, while the pedestrian gate, an arched carved wood door set into a vine-encrusted wall, opens to a semi-tropical fantasia with swooping, tile-accented stairways that lead down to the multi-winged home with its white stucco exterior and traditional clay tile roof.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com At the bottom of the steps, huge plants in azure pots frame the arched front porch that features antique light fixtures and polished terra-cotta tiles.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com Twin tufted chesterfields covered in a sophisticated seal grey fabric sit on a ubiquitously trendy Beni Ourain rug in front of baronial white-plaster fireplace.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com Wood beams enhance the high ceiling, and a wall of full-height bookshelves stained a deep, dark-chocolate brown surround an arched doorway that leads to a billiards room beneath a rustic exposed wood ceiling.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com The spacious high-end eat-in kitchen’s high-contrast black-and-white color scheme is softened and warmed with polished terra-cotta floor tiles and chunky dark-stained wood beams across the cathedral ceiling.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com In addition to a cozy TV lounge, a monochromatically taupe room with a beamed and vaulted ceiling and a giant flat-screen mounted on the wall between a pair of elephant head sculptures, there’s a state-of-the-art screening room wrapped in lustrous wood paneling and furnished for comfort with a plush purple velvet sectional sofa.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com A hidden speakeasy amps up the vintage vibe with a black-and-white inlaid penny-tile floor and a pressed tin ceiling. Tufted leather insets keep knees from getting bruised while sidling up to the glitzy, fully-stocked bar.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com Guest bedrooms include up-to-date vintage-style bathrooms.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com In the main bedroom, where the wall behind the bed is covered in tawny leather panels, there’s a fireplace sheathed in glossy tiles and French doors to a slim balcony that hangs over the pool. A modern and luxurious take on 1930s design motifs, the bathroom’s marble tile floor is complimented by walls completely covered in inlaid white tiles.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com The compound’s grounds offer lush expanses of lawn, numerous elaborately tiled water features and a multitude of patios enshrouded in mature trees and bounteous foliage
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Image Credit: Realtor.com A huge outdoor fireplace emblazoned with blue tiles serves as the focal point for a covered dining terrace above the mosaic-tiled swimming pool that’s tightly ringed by terra-cotta terracing, dense foliage and pencil thin palm trees.
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Image Credit: Realtor.com Galecki, 45, is nowadays hunkered down in the Nashville area, though presumably no longer with his 23-year-old now ex-girlfriend Alain Meyer, with whom he shares an infant son. He previously owned a 160-acre ranch in Santa Margarita, Calif., about 200 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, that was sold in 2019 for $780,000 — much less than the $1.2 million he paid eight years earlier — after much of it was destroyed in the 2017 Hill Fire that swept through the rural community.
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