Actor Marcus Giamatti Lists Hollywood Manor House

SELLER: Marcus Giamatti
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $999,000
SIZE: 2,310 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to The Bizzy Boys at Celebrity Address Aerial (and a listing that brazenly announces the home is "celebrity owned"), Your Mama learned that actor/musician/writer Marcus Giamatti—older brother of Oscar-nominated actor Paul Giamatti (Sideways, John Adams, Saving Private Ryan) and the son of a former president of Yale who later became the Commissioner of Baseball who banned naughty-naughty Pete Rose from baseball—listed his house in the Hollywood Hills last week with an asking price of $1,049,000, already reduced to $999,000.

Mister Giamatti, not as famous and lesser lauded than his younger brother, has none-the-less been toodling reasonably successfully around Tinseltown since the mid-1980s and claims a long list of television credits that include a couple of stints on daytime soap stories (The Young and the Restless, Another World, Guiding Light). Over the years he also shook his Yale-trained money maker in scads and scores of boob-toob programs that include (but are far from limited to) Medium, The Mentalist, Monk and, recently, Revenge. He is perhaps best known as Peter Gray on Judging Amy, canceled back in 2005, and is a well-regarded stage actor with numerous credits both on- and off-Broadway (Young Man From Atlanta, Measure for Measure).

He maintains a side-gig as an accomplished bass guitarist and session musician. He swam varsity at tiny, artsy Bowdoin College, has a degree in African Ethnomusicology—his thesis was on Ashanti Tribal Funeral Music—and currently writes an occasional feature article for some baseball publication we've never heard of (MLB Insider's Club Magazine).

Clearly he's an interesting guy with deep and thoughtful interests and that's reflected in his and his missus's chosen day-core and furnishings that strike an admirably eclectic if—hmm, well, uh—nerve-wracking hodgepodge hot mess where English Country floral prints mix like oil and water with a dollop of Victoriana, a dose of Arts and Crafts, a smattering of 1980s contemporary (glass block), a soupçon of French bistro and a little bit of a whole lotta other things. This may be any number of people's ideal of decorative perfection but, in all honesty, for Your Mama it's a difficult-to-digest stew. Our opinion on the matter is of little consequence and, certainly, much of the frippery will exit the scene with the Giamatti family when they decamp to their next place of residence, wherever that may be.

Property records show Mister Giamatti and his not-famous second wife purchased the property in the Hollywood Manor neighborhood January 2008 for $827,000. Current listing information shows the updated and upgraded two-story house of unknown architectural style—listing information calls in a "Mid Century," which, technically if not stylistically, it is since it was built in 1940—spans 2,310 square feet and contains a total of 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms.

A sharply curved front façade and roof line hint at the rather peculiar shape of some of the interior spaces including the curved, multi-sided living room with hardwood floors, fireplace and screened French doors to the spacious back deck. The adjoining formal dining room also has a curved wall and wood floors that run in a different direction than those in the living room.

A wide opening joins the dining room to the fully-renovated if florid center island kitchen complete with snack bar; custom, Colonial blue raised panel cabinetry, some with leaded glass doors; granite and riveted copper counter tops; medium-grade stainless steel appliances; and a chunky, two-tub copper farmhouse sink.

For some most perplexing and deeply distressing reason the honey-colored hardwoods in the living and dining rooms ends abruptly at the kitchen where the floors are darker and redder, like cherry or mahogany. We get that the kitchen designer was trying to—ahem—set a mood in the kitchen but to install two different colors of wood floors in the same house where they butt right up against each other is, in our humble and utterly meaningless opinion, a decorative crime of punishable proportions. Now, children, if the kitchen designer how opted for an appropriately chosen tile or stone floor material, that may very well have made some damn sense. But two radically different hardwoods like that? Hunny, no. It gives Your Mama a body-wide case of the hives.

Anyhoo, two of the four bedrooms and one of the three bathrooms are located, as per listing information on the main (upper) level. A third guest/family bedroom (with private bathroom) and the master suite (with attached bathroom, private deck and two walk-in closets) are well situated for maximum privacy on the lower level.

The back of the house opens through numerous screened French doors to a huge deck with over-the-tree-tops canyon views. A step-down portion of the deck is shaded by a slatted ramada for tempering the hot glare of the scorching (and somewhat relentless) southern California sunshine and a long and sorta-grand stairway (fashioned with oh-so-humble railroad ties) connects the various nooks and crannies of the landscaped and terraced grounds that include flat grass pads and—as per listing information—a handful of plum and lemon trees.

The hardly fancy Hollywood Manor 'hood is home to a number of (fairly low wattage) Showbiz types who include Morgan Fairchild (who has lived there for years), Brigitte Nielsen (who recently paid $600,000 for a fixer), and Paul DiMeo (whose house is also currently on the market for $1.1 million. Not a lesbian in real life L Word Actress Erin Daniels just sold her house in the Hollywood Manor (for a bit more than asking) and moved a mile or so down the hill to a contemporary crib in Toluca Lake.

Extra fun fact: Mister and Missus Giamatti's real estate agent is a fella named Alastair Duncan who happens to be a part-time actor (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Batman) and who's marital wagon is hitched to Emmy-nominated actress Anna Gunn (Breaking Bad, The Practice Deadwood).

listing photos: Hollywoodland Realty