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Hugh Is Hooked on B.H. Estate

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

HUGH GRANT, who co-stars with Gene Hackman in the upcoming film “Extreme Measures,” and his girlfriend, model-actress ELIZABETH HURLEY, who is co-producing the medical thriller with Grant, have leased a furnished Beverly Hills home at nearly $11,000 a month, sources say.

Grant and Hurley, who live in London, were renting a house in Toronto until early May, when filming on their movie was completed. Due to be released in the United States on Sept. 27, the film is a first for Simian Films, which Grant and Hurley co-founded. Castle Rock is co-producing.

It was a year ago in June that Grant was arrested for soliciting a prostitute on Sunset Boulevard. He pleaded “no contest” to charges of having sex with Divine Brown, the prostitute; was fined $1,800, and was ordered to take a course on the danger of AIDS.

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Since then, he has appeared in a number of films, including “Nine Months,” “Sense and Sensibility” and “Restoration.” He made five films in 1995. Grant, 35, gained worldwide stardom in the English comedy “Four Weddings and a Funeral” in 1994.

Hurley, 30, has lived with Grant in London since 1986, although she did live temporarily in L.A. four years ago, sources say. A model for Estee Lauder, she also has appeared as an actress on British TV, and she has been mentioned for the lead in “Pretty Woman II.”

The couple leased a five-bedroom, 5,000-square-foot Mediterranean-style home, built in 1995, with a pool and city views. The house is owned by a French viscount, sources say.

Before Grant and Hurley leased it, the house was leased for a year by Prince Alexandre von Furstenberg, son of Prince Egon of Austria and New York fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, and his wife.

Barry Peele of Sotheby’s International Realty, Beverly Hills, and Victoria Lockwood of Fred Sands’ Directors office, Beverly Hills, shared the listing on the lease, and Evelyne Bostok of John Aaroe & Associates’ office at the Pacific Design Center represented Grant and Hurley.

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Rapper-actor ICE CUBE has purchased a San Fernando Valley home with a tennis court, guest house and putting green for just under $2.4 million.

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The 9,000-square-foot, Spanish-style house was built in the 1920s but was recently renovated.

Ice Cube, 25, won acclaim in 1991 for his acting debut as the doomed neighborhood enforcer, Doughboy, in John Singleton’s “Boyz N the Hood.”

Joe Babajian and Judy Cycon of Fred Sands Estates, Beverly Hills, had the listing, and Heidi Lake, of the same office, was the selling agent.

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CECIL B. DeMILLE’S Los Feliz residence for more than 40 years when the famous director (“The Ten Commandments” and other screen epics) died in 1959 has been sold to a Los Angeles couple for close to its $2.5-million asking price, sources say.

The home includes two houses, one of which was rented or owned by Charlie Chaplin before DeMille bought it about 1920. DeMille connected the Chaplin house to the next-door house, which he had owned since 1916, by a 60-foot-long, glass-enclosed loggia designed by Julia Morgan, who designed Hearst Castle.

The DeMille family maintained ownership of the compound until 1988, when it was sold to an L.A. attorney and his wife. In 1990, the houses were sold separately, at $2.4 million and $1.5 million, to a Japan-based company, which restored the houses, sources say. In 1989, the compound was listed at $6.75 million.

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Cynthia Radom and Takashi Misawa, both of The Prudential-Jon Douglas Co. in Beverly Hills, represented the buyers, and Lisa and Scott Sorrentino of the realty firm’s Studio City office had the listing.

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The six-acre-plus Montecito estate of PRINCESS SHAMS, sister of the late Shah of Iran, has been listed at $8.5 million. The princess died in March at age 77.

She was an International Red Cross leader who worked for more than 30 years to build Iran’s Red Cross into that country’s largest charitable organization.

Designed by architect James Langenheim, who also designed producer Aaron Spelling’s 56,500-square-foot Holmby Hills home, the Montecito home is about 20,000 square feet in size and has about 30 rooms, including 12 bedrooms and 14 baths.

It also has a pool with waterfalls; an elevator, a heliport, a grand salon with floor-to-ceiling glass for panoramic ocean views, and a glass-enclosed aviary.

The princess moved to Montecito in 1991 after living in Beverly Hills for several years. She and her husband of 50 years, Mehrdad Pahlbod, and their three children had moved to Southern California in 1984.

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Bonnie Jo Danely of Fred Sands’ Montecito office has the listing.

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Emmy-winning movie and TV producer MICHAEL MANHEIM (“Roe vs. Wade,” 1989) and his wife, screenwriter Janus Cercone (“Leap of Faith,” 1992), have listed their Malibu beachfront home at just under $1.4 million. They recently bought a gated, equestrian estate in the Serra Retreat area of Malibu.

“We hate to leave the sand, but the horses just don’t fit on the deck,” Cercone said.

The Malibu home has 70 feet of beachfront. Originally built in 1948, the house was rebuilt after the couple bought it in 1991. The 3,200-square-foot, two-story house has a master suite and an office-studio that could be converted into a second bedroom.

The home is co-listed by Rory Barish of Stan Herman/Stephen Shapiro & Associates, Beverly Hills, and Jack Pritchett of Pritchett-Rapf & Associates, Malibu.

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