A couple of months ago there were a small number of somewhat obscure reports that convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein, once one of the most powerful and feared movie moguls in Hollywood, filed a $138,000 lawsuit against British talent agent Duncan Heath. So the lawsuit reportedly goes, Heath borrowed the money from The Weinstein Co. to fund a stint in rehab for one of his kids. However, Weinstein, now serving a 23-year sentence in a Buffalo, N.Y. maximum security prison and expected to be extradited to California to face additional sex crime charges, claimed he personally repaid his former company, making him the creditor, and that Heath defaulted on the loan even though he’d somewhat recently bought a three-million-dollar home in the Hollywood Hills. As quoted in a blurb on Courthouse News Service, a spokesman for Heath dismissed Weinstein’s lawsuit as nothing more than “a transparent attempt to raise funds for his mounting legal fees.”
Whatever the facts and outcome of the legal dust up, and in a not necessarily related event, the aforementioned home above the Sunset Strip has popped up for sale with Jacob Greenberg and Carl Gambino of Compass with a $3.9 million asking price.
Located just above L.A.’s perennially trendy Sunset Strip near the mouth of Laurel Canyon, the 1920s hillside Spanish villa looks a bit familiar to obsessive property watchers and/or interior design aficionados, it’s because it was briefly owned and lightly gussied up by telegenic married designers Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent, who received tons of press when they put it on the market in the fall of 2016.
After they owned the place less than 1.5 years the Berkus-Brents sold it in late 2016 for $2.855 million to a couple who quite quickly caught a classic case of The Real Estate Fickle and were so eager to get rid of it they sold it just 16 months later for $2.75 million, a $100,000 loss not counting carrying costs and real estate fees. The buyers, per tax records, were one Duncan Heath and his financier/film producer wife Lex Lutzus, the latter one of the producers on the 2014 film “Still Alice,” for which Julianne Moore won an Oscar.
Outside of the relatively insular business of show, Heath’s name is hardly on the tip of anyone’s tongue, though an impressive number of his clients, Michael Caine, Dame Maggie Smith and Sam Mendes among them, are certainly celebrated and widely known. Heath also founded and currently serves as co-chairman of the Independent Talent Group, one of the largest talent agencies in Europe, whose clients include (or at some point included) A-list actors Sir Ian McKellen, Daniel Craig, Orlando Bloom and Thandie Newton.
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Image Credit: Redfin Set privately high above the street and obscured behind high hedging, cumulus foliage and a fireworks-like palm tree, the two-story home retains many original architectural details, i.e. wrought iron railings, casement windows and coved ceilings, along with updated kitchen and bathrooms. There are four bedrooms and four bathrooms in the nearly 4,000-square-foot main residence, plus an airy detached guest bedroom and bath perched atop the street-level two-car garage.
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Image Credit: Redfin The main living room’s austere white-stucco fireplace is jazzed up with an intricate brass screen, and there’s a secondary lounge just a few steps up from the living room. Located between the pint-sized foyer and kitchen, the dining room is furnished as yet another sitting area.
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Image Credit: Redfin Arranged around a doublewide island, the kitchen is on the higher end if a bit generic with shiny white-marble counters, snow-white Shaker-style cabinets and glossy stainless-steel appliances. Beyond the kitchen there’s a petite lounge for TV watching and a sunny dining area set against huge picture windows above the pool.
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Image Credit: Redfin A slender balcony in the comfortably spacious primary bedroom has a breezy, over-the-treetops view, while the bathroom’s inky black walls are in moody contrast to the white-marble shower and copper-lined soaking tub.
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Image Credit: Redfin Though the property spans nearly a quarter acre, the steep hillside setting means some creativity and ingenuity were necessary to squeeze in several terraced patios, a small, unconventionally shaped swimming pool and a faux-grassed roof terrace on top of the garage/guest studio.
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Image Credit: Redfin -
Image Credit: Redfin