Former Marlon Brando home in Sherman Oaks for sale for $2.8 million
I’ve been waiting an entire journalism career to write this next sentence: Marlon Brando slept here.
Arguably the greatest actor of all time once owned and lived in this Sherman Oaks home that is now listed at $2.8 million. The current owner of the property is Maria Cristina Ruiz, Brando’s former housekeeper and mother of his three youngest children.
The single-level custom home, which sits on more than a half-acre, has five bedrooms and four bathrooms. Built in 1939, it has 3,027 square feet. There is a detached guesthouse, a north-south tennis court, a free-standing sauna and a pool with a one-of-a-kind diving board that Brando himself built for his children. That’s got to be worth a few hundred grand.
Brando’s breakthrough acting role on stage came as Stanley Kowalski in “A Streetcar Named Desire” in 1947; he later adapted the role to the movie screen.
Brando, who in his later years lived in self-imposed exile from Hollywood, won his first of two acting Oscars for “On the Waterfront” (1954). His oft-quoted lines -- “I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody” -- are from that film.
In 1972, Francis Ford Coppola cast him as Mafia don Vito Corleone in “ The Godfather,” a role for which he won another Academy Award. Coppola also tapped him to play Col. Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now” in 1979.
Brando died in 2004 at age 80 of lung failure. He also suffered from congestive heart failure, diabetes and had been diagnosed with liver cancer shortly before his death. When he died, his estate was estimated at $21.6 million, which included $18.6 million in real estate.
Elena Safronova of First Team Real Estate is the listing agent.
