He’s Ready for a ‘Leap’ From Ojai

SCOTT BAKULA, who co-stars with Maria Bello in the upcoming CBS series “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” but who is probably best known for his five-year starring role as time-traveler Sam Beckett in the series “Quantum Leap,” has put his Ojai home on the market at just under $1.8 million.

“It breaks my heart to sell it, but sometimes you have to do what you have to do,” said Bakula, who built the nearly 8,000-square-foot house on four acres. He decided to sell the house because he has relocated to be closer to town, where his series is being shot, his spokesman said.

Bakula, 41, not only stars in his new series, which premieres Sept. 20, but he is also its executive producer. In the high-action romantic comedy, he plays an industrial espionage agent who teams with another skilled spy who, contrary to the show’s title, is not his wife.

He is also producing and starring in the CBS movie “The Bachelor’s Baby,” due to air on Sept. 29, and he will act and sing in the Hanna-Barbera animated musical “Cats Don’t Dance,” scheduled for release next summer. While in “Quantum Leap,” which is now in syndication, he won a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama Series.

His Ojai home, which he completed about four years ago, has five bedrooms, an exercise room with a sauna, a loft with skylights and a living room with a stone fireplace, floor-to-ceiling windows and enclosed wet bar.

The house--designed to feature a lot of stone, wood and glass--is reached by way of a foot bridge over a stone creek. The property includes a 43-foot-long pool with a waterfall, room for horses, a tree house, chicken coop and a landscaped garden featured in the 1995 Ojai Garden Tour.

“The garden is my specialty,” he said. “It is a combination of a planned garden and natural California vegetation. There is a wild variety of roses, grass around the pool and a small orchard.”

The home is listed with Jeff Kohl of John Aaroe & Associates, Beverly Hills, and Holly Humphrey of Ojai Realty Co., Ojai.

ERIQ LaSALLE, who stars as the cocky but brilliant surgeon Dr. Peter Benton in the NBC series “ER,” has purchased a Beverly Hills-area house owned in the ‘50s by the late actress Susan Hayward, sources say.

The home is said to have sold for about $1.6 million. LaSalle was previously renting on the Westside.

LaSalle, 33, made his major movie debut in “Coming to America” (1988), then starred in the film “D.R.O.P. Squad” (1994). After studying at Juilliard and New York University, he appeared on “L.A. Law,” “Quantum Leap” and “A Different World.” He also writes and directs.

He bought a four-bedroom 4,000-square-foot home with a guest house overlooking the city. Built in the 1960s, the home was rebuilt in 1988, sources say.

The home was listed by Steve Levine with Asher Dann & Associates, a Jon Douglas Co. Alice Daves of Fred Sands’ Brentwood office represented LaSalle.

BARRY M. GOLDWATER Jr., the retired U.S. congressman and son of the U.S. senator from Arizona who was a presidential candidate in 1964, has sold his Studio City home for close to its $600,000 asking price, sources say.

The buyer is said to be TV writer-producer MICHAEL STEVENS, who is in his late 20s. Stevens has been described as a son of George Stevens Jr., founder of the American Film Institute, and grandson of the late Oscar-winning film director George Stevens, whose 54-year career included such films as “A Place in the Sun” (1951), “Giant” (1956) and “The Diary of Anne Frank” (1959).

Goldwater, 58, is moving to his native Arizona to develop the Goldwater Ranch, sources say. He bought the Studio City home in the early 1980s when he was still a congressman from the San Fernando Valley. After 14 years in office, he gave up his seat in 1982 to run unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate. His father, now 87, used the guest cottage of the Studio City home as his California retreat.

The gated farmhouse-style estate, originally listed at about $950,000, has a four-bedroom main house, one-bedroom guest cottage, pool and valley views. Marcia Goldfarb of Allen Realty in Studio City represented both sides of the transaction.