Filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman to win an Academy Award in the Best Director category for “The Hurt Locker” in 2010, has her long-time home in the mansion-dotted mountains between Beverly Hills and Studio City, Calif., up for sale at $12.9 million. The two-time Oscar-winning director of the critically lauded box office dud “Detroit” (2017) stands to realize an exponential profit on the secluded property she’s owned since 1989 when she and then new husband, also exceptionally accomplished filmmaker James Cameron, bought it for $1.8 million. Tax records show the property was transferred to Bigelow in the fall of 1992, the year after the dissolution of the erstwhile couple’s brief marriage.
Sequestered down a rustic, little-known lane where it’s nuzzled into the rugged landscape along a slender ridge and softened by its rugged natural surroundings, the muscularly massed concrete and glass villa presides over almost two mostly hillside acres with four bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms between the 4,236-square-foot main house and poolside guesthouse. Capacious, rigorously linear interiors that evoke an urban loft space and make use of humble materials utilized in a luxurious manner feature 16-foot exposed beam ceilings, a mix of hardwood and concrete floors and tremendous expanses of floor-to-ceiling windows balanced against vast, chalky white walls reminiscent of a contemporary art gallery.
A minimalist firebox carved out of an otherwise uninterrupted stretch of smooth concrete that extends all the way to the ceiling provides an effective anchor to the unquestionably cavernous living room and beyond the adjoining dining space, which is warmed by a second minimalist fireplace, the expensively utilitarian kitchen has simple but undoubtedly bespoke wood cabinets and premium grade commercial-style stainless steel appliances. There’s also a more intimately proportioned library/office with a full wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and, tucked under a cantilevered end of the living room with a towering, double-height wall of glass that frames an, ahem, cinematic view over the city lights of the San Fernando Valley, a media lounge with state-of-the-art projection system and convenient wet bar.
Guests are accommodated in a cozy en suite bedroom and/or a more ample suite above the garage that’s large enough to accommodate a spacious sitting area and also includes a balcony and bathroom. In a lower level wing of its own, the master suite comprises a grandly double-height and glass-walled bedroom with fireplace and remote-controlled sun shades plus a lofted sitting room, a roomy walk-in closet and a bathroom that includes a cedar sauna box and a lengthy, double-sink vanity daringly floated against a solid wall of floor-to-ceiling glass.
A stone staircase swerves gently down from a tree-shaded graveled patio outside the living, dining and kitchen areas and through a naturalistic, drought considering hillside garden to a swimming pool, spa and pool house serenely and smartly positioned in the picturesque, sun-dappled afternoon shadow of mature oaks.
The bi-coastal “Zero Dark Thirty” director, an executive producer on the upcoming, Ben Affleck staring crime-drama “Triple Frontier,” scooped up an historic and postcard-perfect 72-acre horse property in a particularly bucolic area of upstate New York in late 2016 for $2.6 million and last year she sold a just shy of 1,700-square-foot, two-bedroom and two-bathroom loft-style condominium in a discreetly posh, doorman attended boutique building in the northwest corner of New York City’s Tribeca neighborhood for $2.4 million. Unfortunately for the acclaimed filmmaker, and not counting carrying costs, improvement expenses and real estate fees, the sale price was a bank account brutalizing $600,000 less than the slightly more than $3 million she paid for the place just over two years earlier.
The property is listed with Joan Cohen and Victoria Risko at Sotheby’s International Realty.
