Friday, October 25, 2013

Jackson and Kruger List Hollywood Hills pied-à-terre

SELLERS: Diane Kruger and Joshua Jackson
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $1,519,000
SIZE: 2,389 square feet, 3 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: With an invaluable assist by our ever-so-helpful celebrity real estate aide-de-camp, Lucy Spillerguts, Your Mama learned that long-time coupled but unmarried actors Diane Kruger and Joshua Jackson listed their Hollywood Hills pied-à-terre with an asking price of $1,519,000.

Before the Canadian-American Mister Jackson shot to tween- and teen-aged super stardom in the late 1990s as the love-starved Pacey Witter on the hit show Dawson's Creek he appeared as a child in the—ahem—less-than-stellar sports comedy franchise Mighty Ducks. A couple of handfuls of forgettable movies followed his time on The Creek (Battle in Seattle, Aurora Borealis, Bobby, Shutter) but for the last five years the six-foot-two and usually scruffy-faced Mister Jackson has starred on the boob-toob's critically well-received sci-fi mystery/drama Fringe.

She wanted to be a ballerina but an injury in her late teens spun German-born Miz Kruger off into the glammy, globe-trotting world of high fashion modeling. She worked the catwalks, posed for the adverts of venerable houses such as Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Chanel, and several times landed on the cover of a number of widely read magazines (Vogue Paris, Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan). Miz Kruger's acting career began with a bevy of small parts in French films—she was living in Paris, after all, and an unremarkable appearance in the Brad Pitt action-flick vehicle Troy (2004). She later received accolades for her roles in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds and the sci-fi fantasy drama Mr. Nobody, both in 2009. Miz Kruger doesn't pull down a lot of plum roles in Hollywood she's still a popular gal who's regularly tapped to play some sort of role in all sorts of industry events. She announced the Golden Globe nominations in 2009, she hosted the opening and closing ceremonies of the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in 2007, and last year (2012) she was selected as a jury member at the same festival.

Property records show Mister Jackson and Miz Kruger, through a pair of perplexingly named trusts, acquired their walled and gated hillside digs in the heart of the historic Hollywood Dell 'hood for $1,315,000 in June 2009. Current online marketing materials show the two-story house, a fully updated and upgraded cottage from the 1920s, has three bedrooms and three bathrooms in 2,389 square feet of casually sophisticated interior space with lovely in not exactly thrilling tree-top views.

Discreet yet alluring high-gloss black lacquer gates mark the side-saddle entrance to the residence down a raised, tiled, and foliage protected concourse. The front door opens directly into a "formal" living room with a coved ceiling, a mottled brick fireplace surround, and dark wood floors set off by crisp white walls and a white animal hide rug. Three identical clear glass orbs make for a contemporary (and mass-market catalog-style) stand in for a more traditional chandelier in the window-lined formal dining room.

The adjacent family/media room has more dark wood floors and coved ceilings, a pleasing row of square windows with tree-top and sky views, and direct access to a long deck that runs along the entirety of back of the house and widens up at one end to accommodate a dining area. The center island kitchen mixes vintage details such as honeycomb tile floors and a porcelain farmhouse sink with luxury fittings and features like black marble counter tops and high-quality appliances that include a glass-fronted commercial fridge/freezer and a super-spendy double-wide Lacanache-brand range that Your Mama can imagine cost more than the car the Kruger-Jackson's cleaning lady drives.

The main level master suite—not shown in any of the digital listings this property gossip peeped—has a quote-un-quote "secluded" location, poured concrete floors, a wrap around deck, and a newly installed en suite facility. There are two additional guest and family bedrooms, one on the upper level and a much more extensive one that spreads out over just about all of the lower level. The upper level bedroom has a private bathroom while the lower level offers lucky over-nighters a completely self-contained suite of rooms that include a spacious and private, step-down sitting room with French doors and a still decoratively dernier cri and generally quite pricey Ben Ourani rug. There's also a small kitchen, a private bathroom, and a roomy bedroom with at least two more animal hides tossed casually but purposefully on the floor.

The lower lever guest suite opens to a slender covered deck and slim graveled terrace that almost but not quite runs the full width of the house. The remainder of the house has a more sturdy concrete and stucco colonnade. Anyways, a few steps down from the deck, a probably more sun exposed deck is surrounded by thick vegetation and has a tree growing out of the middle.

Because of the (relative) modesty of their individual holdings Miz Kruger and Mister Jackson aren't exactly real estate ballers but they do maintain a reasonably puffy property portfolio. In addition to their Hollywood pied-à-terre they've just put up for sale, the couple also own a semi-remote, 1.34-acre spread in the mountains near Topanga, CA that one or the other of them scooped up in early 2002 for $865,000 and where they fairly recently added a terraces, gardens, and a rectilinear swimming pool. The comely couple undoubtedly keep a (probably rented) residence in Vancouver—Mister Jackson's hometown and where he tapes Fringe—and they most certainly have an apartment near the busy but elegant Quai Voltaire in Paris that some reports suggest is next door to the haute abode of Herr Karl Lagerfeld himself. (Imagine tapping on that door when you're in need of a spot of sugar or a roll of toilet paper?)*

*P.S. Herr Lagerfeld owns a handful of houses on the same Paris street and, if such matters float your intellectual and/or snobby boats, the severely iconoclastic sartorial maverick's personal library of 60,000+ volumes, children, is all by itself a treasure of immense worth and immeasurable importance.

listing photos: Rodeo Realty

3 comments:

lil' gay boy said...

Just not feeling it -- when I first saw the unfenestrated, monochrome façade, the massing immediately reminded me of the work of Luis Barragan; unfortunately, the back of the house bears almost no relation to the architectural rigor of the front -- not egregious, just sloppy & unprincipled.

And after a long day in front of three computers, I developed an immediate squint with all that white. There are some nice doodads & knickknacks, but I suspect Staging Lady in a Pink Toyota might require some smelling salts before she brings in the orchids, karate-chopped pillows, and (God help us) a pot rack.

Anonymous said...

Kunty Karl's apartment looks like a place Patrick Bateman would want to live.

Sandpiper said...


I'm frightened off from commenting at the thought of knocking on Karl Lagerfeld's door for sugar. His aura intimidates me. He either slip a Sweet'n'Low under the door, not answer at all, or invite me to play video games and we'd become besties.