James Franco Lists His Home in the Silver Lake Neighborhood of Los Angeles
Finally, something to do with the million dollars burning a hole in your pocket! James Franco is selling his Los Angeles home for $949,000 — despite the fact that, as a duplex, it would be an all-too-fitting abode for the star of The Deuce.
According to Trulia, Franco purchased the Spanish-style house, which was built in 1923 and is located in LA's trendy Silver Lake neighborhood, for $775,000 in 2012. The 1,496-square-foot house is spread over multiple levels, with multiple living spaces, a compact but picturesque patio, and a "crow's nest" top floor surrounded by windows looking out over the Hollywood sign and the Silver Lake reservoir. Variety notes that the duplex is split into an upper two-bedroom, two-bathroom main house and a lower one-bedroom, one-bathroom unit, and that Franco originally purchased the home from Mad Men costume designer Janie Bryant.
The one-bedroom lower unit sits on top of an unfinished street-level workspace the size of a single-car garage with rustic barn doors, which is currently sparsely decorated with a desk and table, and has room to store a bike or two. The unit features a sizable living space with lots of natural lighting and a balcony overlooking the street, a saltillo-tiled dining room, and a small kitchen that looks over yet another cozy living space through a small snack bar. The lower unit connects to the main home, which spans three levels and is located above a street-level two-car garage, via a steep outdoor staircase. The upper house comprises a bright and airy living room, access to the second-level patio, a master bedroom featuring a huge white brick fireplace, and yet another outdoor stairway to the fourth-floor crow's nest.
Franco's neighbors will perhaps be happy to see the actor, artist, and professor go. In 2013, shortly after the Oscar nominee moved in, one of his neighbors sent an email to Curbed describing how Franco was using the space as a headquarters for his apparently very noisy production company. "Over the course of the last weeks the individuals living on the property appear to be running a MAJOR production company out of the house and have also used it for shoots," they wrote. "Large white production trucks and various other vehicles block our driveway and use it as a loading zone and block our street with such regularity that we have begun calling parking enforcement to have them ticketed; racks of costumes come and go; crowds of people constantly stream in and out of the house and have business meetings in front of OUR house and treat us as if we are eavesdropping sycophants when we walk out our gate to our car; and as I write this, they've set up hair and make-up in their driveway."
The disgruntled neighbor concluded their letter with, "We like James Franco and we like some of his movies, but we're not so enamored of his presence that we are willing to give up our sanity in our own home."
