SELLER: Winona RyderLOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
SIZE: 3,765 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms
PRICE: $4,095,000
YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to the eagle eyes of our trusted snitch The Rolling Stone, Your Mama learned that actress Winona Ryder put her long time home in Los Angeles, CA on the market with an asking price of $4,095,000.
Arguably, Miss Ryder's professional salad days as an in-demand a-list actress who could pull in the sort of box office receipts that make executive producers swoon with delight were in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Back then she worked her somewhat ethereal and gauzy stuff in seriously successful films such as Beetlejuice, Heathers, Edward Scissorhands, Mermaids, The Age of Innocence, and Little Woman, the latter two earning her Academy Award nominations. Since those heady Hollywood days and except for those few years right after she was picked up for shoplifting $5,500 worth of merchandise at Saks in Beverly Hills, Miss Ryder's worked steadily even though her star status was unquestionably dimmed. Recently, the spritely and quirky actress has experienced an upsurge in her career. In 2009 she starred in 3 feature films including The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, and in 2010 she appeared in two more including Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan and she has at least two more films in the hopper including Tim Burton's next cinematic extravaganza Frankenweenie.
Records show that Miss Ryder picked up her soon to be former Spanish casa in Tinseltown in March of 1998. She paid $2,600,000 for the 1936 abode that was formerly owned (or occupied), according to the mens at Movieland Directory, by one time model and ack-turuss Angie Everhart and, before her, Bernie Taupin, otherwise known and Elton John's songwriting collaborator.
Listing information shows the two story house, wrapped in towering privacy hedges and dripping in wisteria vines and prickly but pretty bougainvillea, measures 3,765 square feet and includes 4 bedrooms and 4 poopers, three of which feature finely maintained vintage tile work. Although powdery pink and baby blue are hardly the colors we'd pick and choose our private master pooper, it's damn refreshing to see these old relics of pooper days gone by preserved rather than ripped out and replaced with some tumbled stone this and black granite shit that.
One need only get their eyeballs on the fake the tee-vees mounted on the walls and the reedonkulous chenille blanket tossed and draped "perfectly" across the bed in the master bedroom to know that that Staging Lady in a Pink Toyota has been up in here and removed every trace of Miss Ryder's day-core and replaced it with a bunch of bland beige crap and neutral knick-knacks that won't give any potential buyer a reason to think a person with style or taste may have actually occupied the home. Your Mama is certain that if we look hard enough we'll find an orchid or two but, seriously people, we can't stomach another orchid making a show of itself in a staged home.
Although Your Mama is not sure if he did up the now removed day-core in this house, we understand from our reading around the interweb that Miss Ryder had nice, gay decorator Kevin Haley do over at least one of her homes. Coincidentally, Mister Haley, who has worked on homes for other famous folks like Brad Pitt and Cameron Diaz, has put his casually decadent house low in the Hollywood Hills on the market too. More on that at a later date.
Anyhoo, the front door opens into a wide entry hall with stained glass windows, Spanish tile floors, dark murals that look to Your Mama like they depict the Garden of Eden or some other sordid story, and a loopy scrolled wrought iron banister that swoops down the sweeping staircase that Norma Desmond, and any other queen who likes to make an entrance, would love. Also very glam, is the downstairs powder pooper complete with burgundy colored vintage tile and an antechamber blessed built in vanity table where guests can conveniently reapply lipstick, do a few lines, and/or check to make sure their chi-chis aren't coming up out of their strapless dinner dress.
Miss Ryder's soon to be former home also has a long formal living room with picture window, hardwood floors, French doors that open to the backyard area, and corner fireplace with carved wood mantel and surround, a dining room, and a narrow paneled pub room with some built in shelves, a couple of emaciated "beams" running across the ceiling that are probably just decorative, and a built in wet bar for getting one's booze on. Somewhere in there, according to listing information is a staff room and a body torture chamber more commonly known as a home gym.
The cook friendly kitchen has an oddly rustic feeling–some might call it charm, but it is decidedly not Your Mama's brand of charming–with hardwood floors, exposed antique brick walls, white cabinetry, beige counter tops, and a venting hood over the range top so big it looks like it could hoover up anyone who might dare to turn it on and stand under it. An adjacent breakfast room opens up into the quiet courtyard that separates the main house from the garage.
The well preserved house and garage wing wrap themselves around a cozy courtyard paved with bricks laid in a herringbone pattern and warmed by an a raised outdoor fire place that could probably double as a barbecue. The courtyard opens up to a classic California kidney shaped swimming pool separated from a small flat patch of grass just large enough to exercise a couple of long bodied bitches like our Linda and Beverly.
Your Mama can't be knowing if Miss Ryder's real estate plans include a downsize, an upgrade or if she's packing up and leaving Los Angeles altogether. Property records–and the bizzy boys at Celebrity Address Aerial–show that Miss Ryder continues to own a home in her home town of San Francisco, CA. All signs and signals indicate Miss Ryder paid $1,300,000 for her 3,436 square foot single family residence in the Cow Hollow neighborhood in April of 1995.
Until June of 2008, Miss Ryder owned a New York City pied a terre in the lovely Gramercy Park neighborhood at 1 Lexington Avenue that she sold for $2,200,000. As far as we know, which is next to nothing, she hasn't purchased a new pad in Manhattan or anywhere else on the east coast.
listing photos: Westside Estate Agency
