How they see us

Once again the New York Times turns to Southern California for a lifestyle feature. This time, the Pasadena home of film producer Gale Anne Hurd ("a delicate, soft-spoken woman with a Louise Brooks bob") and director Jonathan Hensleigh is deemed worthy of East Coast adulation. Though Hurd is known for sci-fi thrillers like The Terminator, Alien and Aeon Flux, "[She] comes home to a very different world of her own making: a 1923 Mediterranean revival house, designed by the prominent Pasadena architecture firm Marston & Van Pelt, that has been painstakingly renovated and furnished to reflect the era in which it was built. Ms. Hurd and her husband...bought the house, in a historic neighborhood in Pasadena, in 2000. They were drawn to its hilltop setting, its large windows, the French doors that opened to the outside from almost every room, and the grounds - three acres with nine fountains, a koi pond and mulberry, myrtle, pomegranate and palm trees."

But the house needed a lot of work, and the couple, along with Lolita De Palma, Ms. Hurd's 14-year-old daughter from her two-year marriage to the director Brian De Palma, had to wait two and a half years before they could move in.

Ms. Hurd wanted the house to look as if it had been decorated in the 20's - for inspiration, she turned to books showing early Hollywood estates - but she and Mr. Hensleigh had no interest in sacrificing contemporary comforts. The existing swimming pool was torn out and replaced by a family room; a new pool and pool house were built elsewhere on the property; the kitchen was expanded, and the garage became a media room, gym and wine cellar.

Bottom line: A six-bedroom, eight-bathroom, 12,000-square-foot showcase "that looks a lot like a set from a 1920's movie." Yes New York, we all live this way.