Even though she already owns a brain-disintegrating luxury real estate portfolio worth nearly $100 million, including lavish homes in Bel Air and Malibu, Taylor Thomson wants a new mansion. And this time, the 62-year-old media heiress and former actress isn’t playing around — records reveal she’s paid about $48.7 million for a Hollywood-pedigreed Santa Monica compound sold by Shane Smith, the cofounder of Vice Media. That sale price is, by several million dollars, the most ever paid for a home in Santa Monica and on the entire Westside of Los Angeles, an area that also includes the posh neighborhoods of Brentwood and Pacific Palisades.
But with a reported net worth of $7.5 billion, Thomson can afford to indulge her every real estate whim. Canada’s second-richest woman, she’s a member of the ultra-private Thomson clan, which has for decades reigned supreme as Canada’s wealthiest family. Forbes says the Thomsons have a collective net worth of about $44 billion, as stewards of a media empire founded by Taylor’s grandfather Roy Thomson. Their biggest asset: Woodbridge, the holding company that owns a controlling stake in Thomson Reuters; Taylor herself reportedly retains a 14% stake in Woodbridge.
Built in 1932, Taylor’s new Santa Monica manse remains best known for its starring role in the 1984 Eddie Murphy blockbuster “Beverly Hills Cop,” where it served as the setting for the film’s climax, an epic shoot-out between Murphy and evil mobster Victor Maitland’s goons. The estate — christened Villa Ruchello — also appeared in “Entourage.”
In 2015, the house was sold for $23 million, sight unseen, to Smith, who with his wife Tamyka embarked on a multimillion-dollar remodel of the rundown premises, which had reportedly been vacant for some time. The Smiths replaced “all the electrical and all the plumbing,” per Tamyka, and they also gave the ol’ girl a seriously expensive facelift, while preserving the home’s grand hacienda-style architectural authenticity.
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Image Credit: Jacob Burghart The property’s most enviable feature is its ultra-private setting, tucked deep into Santa Monica canyon, invisible from the street behind massive gates and a jungle’s worth of leafy foliage — you’ll feel at home in your own private park. The eight-bedroom main mansion contains lavish public rooms, and there are two guesthouses and a separate pool house scattered around the estate.
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Image Credit: Jacob Burghart -
Image Credit: Jacob Burghart Impressively glam amenities include a curvaceous staircase clad in Moroccan ceramic tile and white oak, hand-painted ceilings, and a wood-paneled library with its own hidden speakeasy accessed via a secret bookshelf, which swings open to the boozy escape, original to the Prohibition-era house. There’s also a massive family room with an exposed-wood ceiling and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, plus a music room and a hammam.
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Image Credit: Jacob Burghart -
Image Credit: Jacob Burghart -
Image Credit: Jacob Burghart -
Image Credit: Jacob Burghart -
Image Credit: Jacob Burghart -
Image Credit: Jacob Burghart -
Image Credit: Jacob Burghart In the backyard, the intricate gardens also house nifty upgrades of their own — there’s a 74-foot swimming pool, a Japanese-style cedar hot tub, and a bocce ball court. The pool house includes its own pizza oven, naturally, and there are dozens of fruit-bearing citrus trees — orange, lemon, lime, and avocado among them.
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Image Credit: Jacob Burghart In keeping with the family ethos, Thomson maintains a low public profile in Los Angeles, where she’s resided for many years. But her real estate speaks loudly for her — since 2001, she’s owned a $20 million estate in prime lower Bel Air that’s currently undergoing a major renovation. And back in 2010, she forked out $21.5 million for an oceanfront home within the exclusive, guard-gated Malibu Colony community.
Records indicate Thomson also owns several other lavish properties, including a multi-acre tennis court estate in the hills above Malibu’s Carbon Beach, and a $7.9 million home elsewhere in Santa Monica. But outside of Villa Ruchello, perhaps her most notable real estate holding is a historic 1880s mansion, once owned by Gordon Lightfoot, in Toronto’s high-priced Bridle Path neighborhood, where one of her nearest neighbors is Drake and his $50 million mansion.
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Image Credit: Jacob Burghart Santiago Arana of The Agency held the listing; Richard Ehrlich of Westside Estate Agency repped Thomson.