He Left ‘Las Vegas’ and Home in Hills
Nicolas Cage, who stars in the upcoming movie “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin,” has sold his Hollywood Hills home. The asking price was just under $1.5 million.
Cage, who started shooting the movie “Windtalkers” this month, also stars in “Family Man,” due out in December. “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” finished filming in August.
Cage, 36, co-stars in the movie “Gone in 60 Seconds,” and he marked his debut this year as a producer with the movie “Shadows of a Vampire,” which was a hit at the Cannes film festival. The film is expected to be released in December.
The Oscar-winning actor (“Leaving Las Vegas,” 1995) put his Hollywood Hills home on the market in June 1999 after he moved into a Bel-Air house that he bought in 1998 for about $7 million. Cage had owned the Hollywood Hills home since about 1990.
He sold the house to Jessica Klein and Isaac Levenbrown. Klein is a former writer and executive producer of the long-running Fox series “Beverly Hills, 90210.” Her latest series, “Just Deal,” premieres Saturday on NBC. Levenbrown is the owner of Rail Productions, which designs and installs multimedia visual systems, including 35-millimeter fixed and mobile screening rooms.
Built in 1928, the three-story walled and gated house, on a knoll overlooking the city, has five bedrooms, a circular library, a wine cellar and a humidor in slightly more than 5,300 square feet. There is a hydraulic lift in the garage to park an extra car.
Joe Babajian and Kyle Grasso of Fred Sands Estates, Beverly Hills, co-listed the home with Dorothy Carter of DBL Realtors, Sunset.
George and Eileen Moreno of Fred Sands’ Los Feliz office represented the buyers.
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Michael Ovitz, former super-agent and continuing Hollywood power player, and his wife, Judy, recently purchased a 90-acre ranch in Ojai.
The ranch is to be used by Judy Ovitz, who is involved in horse breeding as a hobby and as a business. An avid animal lover, she is expected to use the property to bring together a number of horses from different locations.
The couple, who plan to maintain their longtime primary residence on the Westside, reportedly paid in the $1-million range for the ranch.
Described as a “pretty” and “hilly” ranch with no house on it, the property was one of several Ojai locations for the imaginary land of Shangri-La in the 1937 movie “Lost Horizon,” starring Ronald Colman, Ojai-area sources indicated.
Michael Ovitz, co-founder of Creative Artists Agency, left CAA in 1995 to become president of the Walt Disney Co. A year later he left Disney with a severance package valued at more than $90 million.
Since then, he co-founded Artists Management Group, signing up some of Hollywood’s biggest stars (including Robin Williams), and he formed Artists Television Group, a TV production company, and Artists Production Group, a movie production company.
In August, author Tom Clancy was signed up in a move that has been termed a “test case” for Ovitz’s plan to represent writers as well as movie stars as an advisor while also negotiating movie and TV deals with them.
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A 157-acre parcel of land owned by the estate of Herbalife founder Mark Hughes has come on the market at $35 million.
Hughes, who died in May at 44, had planned to build a 45,000-square-foot house on the land in Benedict Canyon. He purchased the property in 1997 from entertainer-hotelier Merv Griffin and was trying to get final approval of his plans.
Hughes’ Beverly Hills home, Grayhall, was listed in August at $29 million. Hughes also had a home in Malibu.
Jeff Hyland and Rick Hilton of Hilton & Hyland, Beverly Hills, are co-listing the land with Jerry Jolton of Coldwell Banker Previews, Beverly Hills South. They also have the listing on Grayhall.
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Sonny Vaccaro, who has been described as one of the most powerful and influential people in college basketball as founder of the Adidas ABCD camps (for recruiting student players), has purchased a Calabasas home for about its $1.4-million asking price.
Vaccaro, active in basketball circles for 35 years and director of Adidas’ basketball operations, has been blamed for controlling the recruiting process through his by-invitation-only camps and Adidas’ Big Time basketball tournament, which in July had 312 teams playing 776 games in Nevada.
The marketing executive, who formerly lived in a Pacific Palisades condo, bought a 6,200-square-foot house with six bedrooms and seven baths. Built in 1994, the house, in a gated community, also has a pool, spa and rock waterfall.
Barbara Alpert of Fred Sands’ Calabasas office had the listing; Jordan Cohen of Re/Max Olson & Associates, Westlake Village, represented Vaccaro.
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“Scary Movie” producer Eric Gold has sold his trilevel contemporary-style home off Mulholland Drive for about its $3-million asking price.
Gold, co-executive producer of “The Wayans Brothers” TV series and “The Keenen Ivory Wayans Show,” bought a two-story 3,000-square-foot condo in a high-rise.
His former home has five bedrooms in 7,000 square feet. Built in the 1950s, the house, behind gates with a motor court, also has three terraces, a library, rolling lawns, a pool, spa, waterfall and city-to-ocean views.
Gold bought the house five years ago. The buyer is a financier from the East Coast.
Vida Namouli of Coldwell Banker, Sunset, co-listed the house with Jason Katzman of Paramount Properties, and Namouli represented Gold in buying the condo.
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Michael Gold, a New York-based ad executive for 40 years before he retired this summer to start an L.A. food-and-fashion company called Flying Sushi, and his art director-designer wife, Sirje, have purchased a Hollywood Hills home. The asking price was slightly more than $1 million. The seller was John Tierney, owner of the L.A. restaurant Muse.
The Golds have a home, which they built, in Connecticut. They plan to use the Hollywood Hills house as an extension of his new business and as a place to display their collection of contemporary art.
“I’m very involved in the contemporary art world,” Michael Gold said, “and I plan to be the curator of some shows in L.A.”
While in L.A. on business, Gold realized that “the contemporary art world was booming out here.” His wife will continue to work in Connecticut, he said, but he is already on the directors council of L.A. Contemporary Exhibitions, a nonprofit arts center in Hollywood.
The Hollywood Hills house has lots of glass and light in its 1,700 square feet. “The exterior is Spanish, built in 1924, and there is no indication from the outside that the house has such wonderful, white museum-like spaces,” Gold said. The house was remodeled in 1991.
Barry Sloane, who specializes in historic and architecturally significant properties at Sotheby’s International Realty in Beverly Hills, represented the buyers; Ann Eysenring and Joseph LaPiana, also with Sotheby’s, had the listing.
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Did you miss Thursday’s Hot Property column in Southern California Living? Want to see previous columns on celebrity real estate transactions? Visit https://www.latimes.com/hotproperty on the Internet for more Hot Properties.
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INSIDE: Michael and Judy Ovitz, the estate of Mark Hughes, Sonny Vaccaro and Eric Gold
