When you are surrounded by nearly 10 million people—the current estimate for the population of Los Angeles County—life can sometimes be hurried and hectic. But the City of Angels has a distinction few of the world’s other great cities can claim: thousands of pockets of green and leafy serenity amid the surrounding hubbub. You can live just minutes away from its packed streets yet look out from your bedroom window onto a landscape as quiet and peaceful as a mountain meadow.
That, at least, is the experience of Demi Moore, the star of such blockbusters as Ghost and Indecent Proposal. After several years in bucolic Idaho, she was persuaded by her three daughters to take up residence in California as well, her home during her marriage to their father, Bruce Willis. On her first foray with a real estate agent in 2003, she looked at nine or 10 houses in a day, then, at the end, asked if she could go back to the very first one. “When we walked in,” she says, “my kids whispered, ‘This is the one.’ It was ideal. It was right in the center of things, but it had such a serene quality. It was like being in a tree house.”
Nestled on a canyon hillside in Beverly Hills, the house has total privacy, far from neighbors and protected from the cameras of the paparazzi. For Moore, another attraction was the obvious love that had been lavished on it by its previous owner, who built it in the 1950s. It had only one serious drawback. It was too small for her, her daughters—“We had more kids than bedrooms”—and the new man in her life: Ashton Kutcher, the star of a TV series, That ’70s Show, and such movies as The Butterfly Effect and The Guardian.
To resolve the space problem and to put their own stamp on the house, the couple asked for help from Los Angeles interior designer Brad Dunning. “It’s their love nest,” says Dunning, “and they collaborated on it.
They counterbalance each other very nicely. Both have tons of style, and both wanted a stylish house. His strong input was functionality and comfort. Hers was style and design.”
To help him, Dunning, in turn, called on two architects, Ron Radziner and Leo Marmol, of Marmol Radziner and Associates, with whom he had often worked. “It was tricky figuring out how to push out the house without hurting the views from the existing rooms,” says Radziner. But a solution was eventually found. An addition—two bedrooms, two baths and a children’s den—was cantilevered from the front so it wouldn’t block the prized views of oaks and sycamores. “It’s not your typical house,” says Radziner. “You feel as if you’re hanging in the trees.”
“My desire was to keep the integrity of what was already there,” says Moore. “You feel the outside when you’re inside. The house is part of nature, and nature rarely does it wrong. If we stick closely to it, we’ll always be on the right track.” Faithful to her wishes, Dunning and his two architect friends tried to continue the original architect’s vision—steel for the windows contrasted with woods such as mahogany, teak and Brazilian rosewood for the walls, floors and cabinets. “We chose colors complementary to nature,” says Dunning, “and we respected the palette outside. In California that palette is brown and green. Earth tones are also tranquil. Let the people inside be the excitement.”
Moore and Kutcher agreed. Along with everything else, they asked for a design that would make their friends feel comfortable. “We’re big animal people,” says Moore. “We have two dogs, and I wanted rooms that were elegant but inviting—for kids, dogs and everyone. I didn’t want a living room that looked off-limits.” As a result, Dunning designed a room that is inviting to six people or 60, with a long bench and several floor pillows. “You can even sit on the backs of the chairs,” he says.
On their first date, Kutcher asked Moore if she liked to watch sports. “Yeah,” she said. “In what order?” he demanded. “Football, basketball and baseball,” she replied. That was the right answer—“a huge point” in her favor, she says. Kutcher, she soon learned, is a football fanatic: He was a middle linebacker in high school and is perhaps the country’s most devoted fan of the Chicago Bears. One wall of their den is covered with his football memorabilia, including a seat from Soldier Field, the Bears’ home, and every Sunday afternoon during the season, their friends join them to watch the game on four television sets—each tuned to a different contest.
For Moore and Kutcher, their new home is not just a place to live. It is a symbol of their commitment to each other. “It’s a shared creation,” says Moore, “and we both have such a love for it. It’s a reflection of our life together.” It is fitting, then, that on a Saturday in September 2005, just a few weeks after they moved in, they stood in that living room, so hospitable to friends, children and dogs, and said the vows that made them husband and wife.
“This was a definite joint effort,” actor Demi Moore says of the 1950s canyonside house in Beverly Hills she renovated with her husband, actor Ashton Kutcher. “We had a give-and-take that was very easy.” Bedrooms for her three children were among the additions.
Window walls in the living room, as throughout, maximize exposure to the outdoors.
A 1930s table centers the dining area. “It’s interesting how things start to call to you,” says Moore, who sought guidance from interior designer Brad Dunning. “Pieces from the ’30s to the ’70s were an automatic fit.”
A stairway curves through an atrium linking sections of the house, which was remodeled by Leo Marmol and Ron Radziner.
The rear garden, landscaped by Pamela Burton, has a spacious deck and a pool. The house “works really well for entertaining,” Moore notes.
Preserving the openness to nature was a top priority. “There’s a great warmth to the house,” Moore observes. “I wanted to keep that organic quality.”
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