Many of Hollywood’s most famous houses from films don’t actually exist – Tara from Gone With the Wind, for example, was a fake facade, while the infamous Bates Motel of Psycho fame sits on the Universal Studios lot. But in a few special cases, only these original houses would do (and if you ask us, they stole the show). They may have traded hands over the years, with their listing ads running like celebrity gossip columns, but to us, these 10 houses will always be the stuff of Hollywood glamour.
‘The Big Chill’
Most of the action in this 1983 baby-boomer touchstone took place in and around this antebellum mansion in Beaufort, South Carolina. Boasting an impressive 7,000-plus square feet – encompassing five bedrooms and eight baths – the Italinate home was built in 1853, and is known as Tidalhome.
‘The Big Chill’
In addition to the home’s southern charm and massive size, one of the reasons it was used as the location for the film was the fact that it’s situated on the banks of the Beaufort River, and includes a guest cottage (where the deceased character played by Kevin Costner, who was cut from the film, lived). This large porch was just one of the memorable locations utilized in the film.
‘The Big Chill’
The home was most recently on the market for $4.5 million back in 2013. By the way, The Big Chill isn’t the first movie to utilize the home; it was previously used for Robert Duvall’s 1979 Oscar-nominated film The Great Santini.
‘The Big Lebowski’
The home of wealthy pornographer Jackie Treehorn in The Big Lebowski, is actually this iconic Los Angeles home – known as the Sheats Goldstein Residence. It was designed by famed architect John Lautner in the early 1960s, and was also featured in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle.
‘The Big Lebowski’
One of the home’s more fascinating features is that the coffered ceiling in the living room boasts 750 drinking glass-sized skylights.
‘Blade Runner’
In the 1982 sci-fi classic Blade Runner, L.A.’s famed Ennis House was used for scenes within the apartment of Deckard, played by Harrison Ford.
‘Blade Runner’
Located in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles, Ennis House was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and remains one of the pre-eminent homes to from Wright’s Mayan Revival period, boasting carved ornamental blocks that were inspired by the symmetrical reliefs of Mayan structures in Mexico.
‘Blade Runner’
In 2011, Ennis House was purchased by billionaire Ron Burkle for a relatively inexpensive $4.5 million – a small price for a home with a pedigree in both architecture and Hollywood history. According to the terms of the sale, Burkle must provide the public with access to the home for no less than 12 days each year, according to terms of a conservation easement held by the Los Angeles Conservancy.
‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’
One of the most memorable moments from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is when Ferris (Matthew Broderick) gets the genius idea to roll back the odometer on the sweet red Ferrari owned by the father of pal Cameron (Alan Ruck) – which goes horribly awry when the car winds up shooting out the back of its glass garage and flies down a ravine. The building is actually known as the Ben Rose Home, designed by architects James Speyer and David Haid in 1953, and is located in Highland, Illinois.
‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’
The open-concept home – glass on all four walls, bringing in the greenery from outdoors – was put on the market in 2009 at an asking price of $2.3 million in 2009; after several price reductions, it sold in 2016 for just $1 million.
‘The Godfather’
Everybody who’s seen The Godfather remembers the scene when movie producer Jack Woltz wakes up with the head of his beloved horse in his bed, and this is the fabulous Beverly Hills mansion that was used for the producer’s home. And what a home it is: 15 bedrooms, an near Olympic-sized pool and a total of 50,000 square feet of luxury living space.
‘The Godfather’
The home was placed on the market in September 2016, with the whopping asking price of $195 million – a $60 million increase over the previous time it was listed for sale. Fun fact: the home was once owned by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, was also used in The Bodyguard (starring Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston), and has the distinction of being where JFK and Jacqueline Kennedy honeymooned.
‘Home Alone’
When the forgetful family of Kevin McAllister (Macaulay Culkin) left him “home alone”, he fended off filmdom’s most inept burglers in this distinguished brick house in Winnetka, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. The red-brick Georgian-style home sold for just under $1.6 million in 2012 after nearly a year on the market.
‘Home Alone’
Boasting five bedrooms and 3.5 baths, the home has been updated substantially since moviegoers first saw it in 1990 – although it’s anybody’s guess whether Kevin’s crime-busting booby traps were left intact.
‘Iron Man’
Here’s an aerial view of the futuristic oceanfront Malibu pad that’s home to billionaire Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) in Iron Man and its sequels. But here’s a spoiler: this home doesn’t actually exist; and what we see in this photo is actually CGI trickery. However, an actual home was used for interior shots in order to depict Stark’s estate in Point Dune.
‘Iron Man’
The actual home, in fact, is actually located in La Jolla, California (near San Diego) and nowhere near Malibu. But it was used to film interior sequences within the home, and there’s no denying the 11,000-square-foot place is pretty darn spectacular in its own right – a home fit for a billionaire superhero.
‘Iron Man’
Designed by architect Wallace E. Cunningham, the home – dubbed “The Razor” – took six years to build. Construction on “The Razor” was completed in 2008 and features white polished concrete with panoramic windows to capture the spectacular ocean views. The home sold for $14 million a few years back; had it been located in Malibu’s Point Dune, where Tony Stark’s house supposedly is, it would have sold for a whole lot more.
‘Harry Potter’
The modest home at 4 Privet Drive owned by Harry Potter’s uncle and aunt, the Dursleys, came up for sale in 2016. The home is actually located in the village of Little Whingeing in Surrey, England.
‘Harry Potter’
The Harry Potter house came on the market in 2016, with the owners asking £475,000 (approximately $620,000 in U.S. dollars).
‘Harry Potter’
The actual home boasts a far more modern feel than the Dursleys’ dreary decor – and does anyone remember the living room being so open and spacious? By the way, there actually is a closet under the stairs, although it’s only in the movies that the storage space was used as a tiny bedroom for a young wizard.
‘Sleepless in Seattle’
While moviegoers swooned over the blossoming long-distance romance between Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in the beloved rom-com, some were also swooning over the floating home occupied by Hanks’ character, anchored in Puget Sound and offering a spectacular waterfront view.
‘Sleepless in Seattle’
The two-story, four-bedroom home is spacious within and lined with deck space all around, and remains a popular tourist attraction sought out by visitors to Seattle. The home sold in 2014 for more than $2 million.
‘Twilight
Known to fans of Twilight as the residence of the vampiric Cullen clan, the abode is just as famous in its real-life incarnation as home to John Hoke, director of footwear design for Nike, and was used in the first Twilight film. The 4,300-square-foot Hoke House was designed by architect Jeff Kovel via Skylab Architecture; Hoke was reportedly pleased to see his home used as the base for a family of sophisticated vampires.
‘Twilight: New Moon’
But did you know a different home was used in Twilight: New Moon? In that sequel, the Cullen house was doubled by this 5,000-square-foot, five-bedroom creekside home in West Vancouver. Designed by famed architect Arthur Erickson, the home was on the market back in 2009 with an asking price of $3.3 million; let’s assume it’s worth a lot more now.
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