There's been a bit of brouhaha in the tabs, blogs and gossip glossies the last couple of days about (allegedly) back-on-track Tinseltown train wreck/starlet Lindsay Lohan coughin' up a whopping $25,000 a month to lease a secluded house tucked up into The Hills of Beverly.
Miss Lohan's antics—drinking and driving, stumbling out of clubs around the globe at all hours of the morning, purloining jewelry and etc.—clearly got the best of the once-promising actress the last few years but she's no doubt got her fingers and toes crossed her stalled career is on a bit of an upswing with recent and/or upcoming appearances on Saturday Night Live and Glee. (For what it's worth, both received mixed reviews.)
She was quite controversially recently cast as Elizabeth Taylor in an yet-to-be-taped tee-vee biopic about the iconic actress and committed philanthropist's fabled life. Well, all we'll say about that partickaler publicity-generating casting choice is that both women gained Showbiz fame and fortune very young and live—or lived in the case of now-deceased Miz Taylor—melodramatic lives littered with doomed romantic entanglements and untold numbers of sometimes ugly public scenes often (and allegedly) fueled by booze and and other illegal substances.
Anyhoo the fine folks at E! questioned the $25,000 figure yesterday and it only took a few minutes digging around the dirty murk of the interweb (and a leg up from both Mirakle Mike and Our Fairy Godmother in Beverly Hills) for Your Mama to figure out that Miss Lohan ain't paying quite that much for her impressively-gated mini-estate in Bev Hills.
A covert communique from Our Fairy Godmother in Beverly Hills included documentation that reveals the fully renovated 1937 Georgian-Colonial—or whatever—was listed for $12,500 per month a couple years ago and was leased in fall 2010 for $9,000 to an unknown tenant.
One (online) listing we located shows the all-but-hidden 1.5 acre spread was listed late last year (2011) with an asking price of $8,950 per month. We don't know a thing about a thing, of course, but we think it's probably safe to say Miss Lohan's paying somewhere near and probably less than that amount. That's obviously a lot more money than most people earn in a month but well less than half the previously reported $25,000.
Listing information we peeped reveals the 3 bedroom and 3.5 bathroom house measures just under 2,500 square feet and includes formal living and dining rooms with polished wood floors and numerous French doors and a recently renovated center-island kitchen with marble counter tops. The second floor master bedroom has a triple exposure, private balcony, (possibly decorative) fireplace and attached bathroom equipped with two sinks, glassed-in shower stall, separate jetted tub and a bidet for washing one's naughty bits.
The long driveway, gated with a massive iron gates, climbs up to a small motor court with two car garage. The front of the house opens to a brick terrace that wraps around to surround the oddly shaped swimming pool and spa nestled into the hillside. A deck cantilevers off the hillside to take advantage of the sliver of city views and a walled courtyard on the up-slope side of the house has a built-in barbecue.
Prior to her over to her move to Beverly Hills Miss Lohan was allegedly shacked up at the Chateau Marmont where she decamped after, so the story goes, she grew tired of living right up on the street in a very vertical, townhouse-type abode in the L.A. beach community of Venice that happens to be right next door to the almost identical townhouse-type abode leased by her former girlfriend Samantha Ronson.
listing photos: Hilton & Hyland