Seeking Bliss in the South Bay

New Age superstar Deepak Chopra has purchased a tear-down house on an acre with sweeping coastline and city views in the South Bay area of greater Los Angeles for about $1.3 million, sources say.

The house was built in the 1950s and has four bedrooms in 2,600 square feet. The property, behind gates, has a park-like backyard with a koi pond and a spa.

“It’s on one of the best lots in the area . . . a big, flat lot on a hillside,” a real estate source said.

It could take a year just to get preliminary approval for any building plans, sources say. In the meantime, Chopra has put up the house for lease at $4,200 a month.

“He might as well have an income stream while working on plans and getting approvals,” a source said.

Chopra already owns a couple of homes, including one in La Jolla that he and his wife, Rita, bought before opening his nearby Chopra Center for Well Being, which offers meditation sessions and rejuvenation treatments.

Chopra, 50, was born in India but has lived in the United States since he moved to the East Coast at age 23 to practice medicine. He completed residencies in internal medicine and endocrinology and was chief of staff at a New England hospital before adopting his holistic approach to well being during the mid-1980s.

He relocated to La Jolla in 1993 and opened his center there a couple of years ago. Since then, he has been described as “a one-man multimedia empire.” Among his many projects are about 20 mostly self-help books, a hip-hop CD and an interactive CD-ROM.

Frequently on the road to give seminars and make TV and other appearances, Chopra has had such celebrity supporters as Demi Moore, Naomi Judd and the late Dr. Benjamin Spock, who wrote a recommendation in Chopra’s “Seven Spiritual Laws for Parents,” published last fall.

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L.A. Lakers owner Jerry Buss has listed his home on the bluffs of Playa del Rey at $1.65 million.

Buss, in his 60s, bought the Lakers, the Kings and the Great Western Forum from the late Jack Kent Cooke in 1979. Buss sold the Kings in 1988. During his first decade of owning the Lakers, Buss saw the team win five NBA championships.

He has owned the Playa del Rey house since it was built in 1987. He is selling it, because he already has moved into a larger home nearby, a source said.

Among the features in the Playa del Rey home are six bedrooms, five baths, family and game rooms in a bit more than 6,800 square feet. The home also has a six-car garage.

Reyn and Patty Park, a husband-wife realty team, share the listing at Shorewood Realtors in Manhattan Beach.

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Character actor Dennis Farina, who played Bette Midler’s ex-husband in the movie “That Old Feeling” (1997), has leased a Westside condo for a month at $10,000 while he is in town shooting a pilot for a new series, sources say.

Farina also appears in the George Clooney-Jennifer Lopez crime movie “Out of Sight,” due out in June.

The two-bedroom condo is in a Wilshire Corridor tower that specializes in leasing to celebrities. Monthly rentals range from $5,000 to $20,000.

Farina, 54, was an 18-year veteran of the Chicago police force when he met producer-writer-director Michael Mann, who cast him in the 1981 movie “Thief.”

That part led Farina to star in the 1980s NBC series “Crime Story” and to appear in such other projects as “Get Shorty” (1995), in which he played Ray “Bones” Barboni. For that part, he won the American Comedy Award as funniest male in a supporting role.

Elaine Young and Barbara Eisner, both of Dalton, Brown & Long in Beverly Hills, represented Farina in the lease.

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Actress Suzan Hughes, who plays a recurring role as Tiffany on the daytime soap “The Bold and the Beautiful,” has purchased a Beverly Hills home for about $4 million, sources say.

Hughes, in her 30s, is the ex-wife of Mark Hughes, the 41-year-old founder and owner of Herbalife International, the nutritional products company.

She also is a martial arts and physical fitness expert and recently released an exercise tape, her spokesman said.

Before marrying Hughes in 1987, she owned a court-reporting agency in L.A. Their divorce was final this week, a source said.

Suzan Hughes has closed escrow on a seven-bedroom contemporary behind gates with a tennis court, guest house, 10-car garage, elevator, maid’s quarters, wine cellar, ballroom, eight fireplaces, a floating spiral staircase, a sitting room/office, and three wet bars.

The 11,000-square-foot house, on about an acre, was built in 1990. The home had been foreclosed on by a bank, which was the seller.

Maurice Umansky of Hilton & Hyland, Beverly Hills, represented Hughes in her purchase, and Lauren Polan of Coldwell Banker-Jon Douglas Co. had the listing.

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A Hollywood home owned for years by movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn has come on the market at $1.75 million.

The owner is a retired businessman who wants to move into smaller quarters. He has owned the home for about three years and restored the main house.

The main house has four bedrooms and two maid’s rooms. The 6,500-square-foot home also has a billiard room, four fireplaces, a sun porch, pool house, pool and guest house.

On the same block as a house once owned by Ozzie and Harriet Nelson and featured on their weekly TV show from 1952 to 1966,the Goldwyn home was built for the movie mogul in 1916. He lived there until about 10 years before he died at age 91 in 1974.

Goldwyn was the Hollywood pioneer who had the foresight, when living in New York, to film the 1913 silent movie “The Squaw Man” in a lemon grove in L.A.

The company that he helped form to produce “The Squaw Man” eventually became Paramount studios. His second company, Goldwyn Pictures, became Metro-Goldwyn Mayer.

After the MGM merger, Goldwyn produced movies independently. He is credited with introducing such personalities as Will Rogers and Eddie Cantor. Goldwyn produced his last movie, “Porgy and Bess,” in 1959.

Steve Riggs of Coldwell Banker-Jon Douglas Co., Sunset office, has the listing.