LOCATION: Pacific Palisades, CA
PRICE: $3,250,000
SIZE: 4 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Boobtastic B-list actress Jennifer Love Hewitt* sold her recently deceased mother's six bedroom and six bathroom mini-mansion in L.A.'s celeb-stocked Toluca Lake nabe last December (2012) for $2,150,000 to a well-regarded L.A.-based Italian chef. Earlier in the year she put her own semi-Spanish style lake-front house—located catty-corner across the street from moms—up for lease at $12,500 per month. So, although unexpected, it came as no surprise when we received a covert communique from a tattle tale we'll call Wanda Tellyousomething who whispered to Your Mama that the 20+ year Showbiz veteran—and occasional celebrity gossip blog laughing stock and punching bag—dropped $3.25 million on a new, contemporary home in the sleepy, family friendly and exceedingly affluent Los Angeles beach community of Pacific Palisades.
Miss Love Hewitt came to Los Angeles as a wee child from a tiny town in central Texas with lots of heart and stardust in her pre-teen eyes. She booked numerous commercials before she got her big t.v. break in 1989 on Kids Incorporated starring none other than Stacey Ferguson, the entertainer now known as the uni-monikered Fergie. In 1995 the ambitious young actress landed on the enormously popular primetime family drama Party of Five, a high-profile ensemble gig that resulted in a starring role in the very short-lived sequel Time of Your Life. A number of hokey t.v. movies followed (The Audrey Hepburn Story, Confessions of a Sociopathic Social Climber) until 2000 when she snagged a five year run as the clairvoyant star of the popular Ghost Whisperer, canceled in 2010. Miss Love Hewitt currently stars in all her curvaceous physical glory in The Client List, a naughty-themed primetime drama about an upscale Sugar Land, TX massage parlor that specializes in happy endings and other extra sexual treats for a cadre of affluent and sometimes pervy gentlemen.
Along the way, for better and worse, the famously unlucky in love Miss Love Hewitt became just as well known for her merry-go-round romantic life as for her professional accomplishments. JLove—don't you imagine she might describe herself as a hopeless romantic?—has reportedly dated or "dated" scads of famous and semi-famous men including but not limited to Jamie Kennedy, Ross McCall, John Mayer, Shaggy, Ethan Zohn, Wilmer Valderrama, Carson Daily and Joey Lawrence. She's currently hot and heavy with her Client List co-star Brian Hallisay. He plays her husband and the father to her young children. Is this art imitating life or life imitating art? None of the above? Who cares? Anyways, Wanda also told Your Mama that until they move to their new digs in the Palisades the couple of less than a year are shacked up in unmarried sin in a rented penthouse pad atop one of the swankier high-rise apartment towers that line Wilshire Boulevard near Westwood and Century City.
As recently as mid-April some of the celebrity-based blogs and gossip glossies reported that Miss Love-Hewitt and her co-star/man-friend were house hunting and planning to make a baby, in that order. Turns out, butter beans, by mid-April Miss Love Hewitt was already deep in escrow on a modern-minded house in Pacific Palisades that property records show she closed on in late April (2013) for exactly $3.25 million. For the record, since the property was purchased via a property trust long connected to Miss Love Hewitt and her Toluca Lake residence it's not clear to Your Mama if Mister Hallisay has any financial stake in or ownership of the residence.
Property records indicate Miss Love Hewitt bought the modern abode from designer denim mogul Peter Koral who co-founded the wildly successful 7 for all Mankind brand that he and his partners sold in 2007 for more than three quarters of a billion bucks.
Listing details don't include the square footage for the two-story contemporary but does reveal the urban loft inspired single family dwelling was designed by Santa Monica-based architect Melinda Gray and built in 2007. The steel, glass, concrete and wood structure sits firm-footed on a (quite tight) .13 acre mid-block lot above Temescal Canyon with four bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms, and an uplifting butterfly roof that evokes—or mimics, really—a classic, mid-century modern architectural affect.
The urban meets organic interior spaces include an open plan main living area with a double height living room/lounge large enough to accommodate a substantial sitting area in front of a television surmounted fireplace plus host a baby grand piano in front of a wide wall of glass that slides open up to a dense thicket of up-lit bamboo that shields the view from the upper floor of the closely situated neighboring house.
At the back of the sprawling room a dining area and adjacent den area function as a single space along with the spacious open concept center island kitchen outfitted with granite topped custom bamboo cabinetry and a multi stool snack and booze bar. A plethora of high quality commercial style appliances includes two ovens, two dishwashers, a six burner range, and a built-in espresso maker. A floor-to-ceiling glass panel pocket door disappears into the wall and unites the interior to the bamboo ringed courtyard-style backyard. Somewhere on the ground floor there's a small bedroom/office/den with direct access to a bamboo enshrouded concrete patio.
A sky lit and satisfyingly muscular open tread floating staircase fashioned of wood and steel with frosted glass panel banister ascends to a wee library loft on the second floor. A sphincter tightening glass-railed catwalk spans the living room below and connects to the master suite that's complete with walk-in closet, street-side balcony with (what appears to be) a fire pit and over-the-tree-tops view towards the ocean, and an expensively appointed but hardly huge custom tiled bathroom with separate soaking tub and steam shower.
Back downstairs the courtyard-style backyard isn't very big by any standard except perhaps an urban one. It is, howevuh, well (if maybe over ) equipped and smartly organized for a handful of recreational utilities. At the back there's a slightly raised plunge-sized swimming pool backed by a stacked stone wall. Up against the house there's a television lounge area with outdoor fireplace and, back in the corner, there's a built-in fire pit. Why, children, a backyard this bantam needs both an outdoor fireplace and a built-in fire pit is beyond Your Mama's ability to fathom. It just seems like a fireside overkill, you know? Anyhoodles poodles...
The still somewhat nascent couple have reportedly already talked babies and mazel tov for them. We expect that soon after Miss Love Hewitt gets impregnated and/or married she and Mister Hallisay soon start another extensively exhausting hunt for a larger, more family-oriented home with a backyard large enough to accommodate both a ludicrously expensive jungle gym and ludicrously lavish (and pricey) birthday parties. Because, let's be honest, children, if ever there were a Tinseltowner who Your Mama could imagine would spend big on a jungle gym for her tiny tot or drop a small fortune on an extravagant, themed birthday party for a one or two year old—a tiny child who will not remember a single spendy second of the damn thing, mind you—it would be Miss Love Hewitt. And—no doubt—one of the gossip glossies would be invited to report on the elaborate festivities and one of the gossip glossies would happily do just that. Are we wrong?
With a new house not so far from beach—we guesstimate it's about 2,500 feet as the crow flies—it remains to be seen what Miss Love Hewitt plans to do with her old house in Toluca Lake.**
*Don't hate, people. She's the one who recently publicly jested she ought to insure her 36Cs for five million bucks. And—all T no shade—she is B-List. You know she is. Don't misunderstand Your Mama. The lady has worked, relatively speaking, steadily since she was prepubescent and she's earned (and earns) an enviable fortune in the dream crushing cat eat pony world of Hollywood. So kudos for that. But in the overall hierarchy of Hollywood—and there most certainly is a merciless hierarchy in Hollywood—she's not exactly an A-List actress in the vein of, say, Jessica Chastain or Jennifer Lawrence. Can we agree? Anyways...
**Your Mama heard through the celebrity real estate gossip grapevine that Miss Love Hewitt leased her Toluca Lake residence to Jessica Simpson's mother Tina after she moved from the Encino mansion she once shared with her former preacher husband who—as it turns out and so the stories go—is a homosexual. We can't vouch for the veracity of the scuttlebutt and we don't know if it is true that Miss Love Hewitt leased her house to ex-Missus Simpson if the newly divorced celebrity mom remains in residence or if she's moved on.
listing photos: Prudential California