SELLER: Renée Zellweger
LOCATION: East Hampton, NY
PRICE: $4,450,000
SIZE: 2,000 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms
YOUR MAMA’S NOTES: Renée Zellweger’s face was splashed all over the tabloids and gossip glossies last week because, headlines screamed with authority and importance, she looked different, pretty nearly unrecognizable according to some. Indeed, no less than The Old Grey Lady herself weighed in on the not-exactly-weighty matter and described her as “radically different appearing.” Miz Zellweger went on the defense told the people at People that all the chatter was “silly” and that any perceived differences fans (and others) might see in her face was due to “living a different, happy, more fulfilling life.” Oh, the indignities of being a famous actress in America. Anyhoodles, poodles, this week, the semi-retired seeming Oscar-winner is back in the “news,” this time in all the property gossip columns, because, as was first revealed by the assiduous kids at Curbed, she’s hoisted her home in East Hampton on the open market with a $4.45 million price tag.
Property records show Miz Zellweger, who will return to the silver screen in a thriller opposite Keanu Reeves next year after a four or five-year absence, purchased the property in April 2003 for $2.15 million. Current listing details show the humble if hardly inexpensive, cedar-shingled farmhouse, just one long and curvy block from the heart of downtown East Hampton and exactly a mile up the lane from the high fallutin’ and famously lily-white Maidstone Club, sits on .91 gated and high-hedged acres and measures in at a modest 2,000-ish square feet with four bedrooms and three bathrooms.
The air-conditioned and systemically updated interiors retain original details such as wide plank wood floors and at least one brick fireplace (in the living room). A narrow center hall entry divides the living room from the dining room where a rustic farmhouse table sits in snug opposition below a glimmering antique chandelier. The kitchen, with a sloping bead-board paneled ceiling that’s authentic if probably not original to the farmhouse, has a distinct industrial edge with a commercial-grade stainless steel sink fixture and other high-grade stainless steel appliances.
The property includes a detached two-car garage with loft area, flagstone-style slate walkways and trellis-shaded terraces, broad and flat lawns and, as far from the house as it can possibly be, a heated and newly installed — or, at least, freshly redone — in-ground swimming pool set against a tall wall of mature trees and shrubs.
Miz Zellweger’s property portfolio still includes a 39-acre farm property near Pomfret Center, CT, she purchased in late 2004 for $1,320,000 and has had on an off the market since at least late 2011 when it popped up for sale at $1.5 million. (It was recently re-listed for $1.6 million.) In 2011 Miz Zellweger sold a decadent cluster of contiguous but not entirely combined apartments in a grand old Upper East Side townhouse building to Leelee Sobieski and her fashion designer and real estate scion husband Adam Kimmel for a total of $7,406,000 and way back in 2003 she very briefly owned an estate in Bel Air she sold to Debra Messing for $7 million. (Miz Messing subsequently sold the place, in February 2013, for $11.4 million to a couple from New York City who — several well-informed sources wo include Peter Propertyseller and Yolanda Yakketyyak tattled to Your Mama — outbid Columbian-born sitcom superstar Sofía Vergara.
Listing photos: Douglas Elliman
