
After many years spent conquering the private equity and entertainment industries, respectively, David Bonderman and Christa Campbell are reaping the rich residential rewards. The transactions actually went quietly down last year, but the pair has spent $30 million to acquire two lavish homes — one an all-new mansion in Pacific Palisades, the other a 1920s Santa Monica beach house with a Hollywood history.
Bonderman, 80, is chairman and founder of Texas-based private equity giant TPG Capital, which manages more than $120 billion in assets. The L.A. native is widely known to ice hockey fans as owner of the NHL’s Seattle Kraken team; he’s also a minority owner of the NBA’s Boston Celtics. Bonderman’s personal net worth tops $6.5 billion, per Forbes.
Campbell, 50, got her professional start as a Playboy model and bit-part actress. After appearing in dozens of films and carving out a reputation as a horror-flick “scream queen,” the California native became a Hollywood producer, partnering with filmmaker Lati Grobman to create Campbell Grobman Films. Since then, she’s financed numerous big-screen capers — among them “Rambo: Last Blood” and “Texas Chainsaw 3D.” To the general public, however, Campbell may be best known for once dating Seth MacFarlane.
Bonderman lives separately from but reportedly remains married to longtime wife Laurie Michaels, with whom he shares five adult children and at least two lavish estates — one a 500-acre ranch in Aspen, the other a mansion in Fort Worth, Texas, near TPG headquarters. The leveraged buyout mogul, whose free-spending escapades are the stuff of legend, also reportedly owns pricey toys like a $70 million Gulfstream private jet and a superyacht.
As for Bonderman’s new L.A. homes, he and Campbell together doled out $12.8 million for an oceanfront estate on Santa Monica’s so-called Gold Coast. A few months later, they dropped another $17.5 million — the property’s full asking price — on a brand-new mansion on the Pacific Palisades Riviera, a favored neighborhood for A-list celebrities including Ben Affleck, Adam Levine, Steven Spielberg and Michelle Pfeiffer.