For Sale: The Real “Stepmom” (and “Bounty Hunter”) House

by HOOKEDONHOUSES on JANUARY 2, 2011

One of my all-time favorite movie houses has to be the gorgeous 1850s Victorian with the wraparound porch in the Julia Roberts-Susan Sarandon tear-jerker Stepmom. It was one of the first movie houses I wrote about when I started my Movie Mondaysseries back in 2008, and it continues to be one of the most popular.

Imagine my excitement when I heard from the homeowner herself, saying she enjoyed reading my post and the comments about her house! Not only that, but she said she was putting the house on the market soon and would let me know as soon as it was listed.

Well, the house is now officially on the market, and she sent me the listing. It’s in Upper Nyack, New York, and the asking price is $3.375 million.

If the house looks familiar, but you never saw Stepmom, it may be because it was also used in the more recent movie The Bounty Hunter with Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston, posing as a Bed & Breakfast called “Cupid’s Cabin.”

The front door as shown in the listing:

Would I kill for this front porch? Don’t tempt me.

If the interior photos look familiar, it’s because the Stepmom sets were actually modeled on many of the real rooms in the house. Here’s the front door and staircase in the real house:

And in the movie:

The living room in the listing:

The living room as it looked in The Bounty Hunter:

And how it looked in Stepmom (which was a set based on the real thing):

The real kitchen:

I especially like this eat-in breakfast nook with the tall windows all around:

Jackie’s (Susan Sarandon’s) kitchen in Stepmom:

The house has 8 bedrooms, 4 baths, and 6 fireplaces. It was built in 1854 and has over 5,000 square feet.

Here’s how that upstairs landing looks in the movie–you can see they were inspired by the real thing:

The listing describes the house as the “Extraordinary French Second EmpireVictorian gem ‘Glenholme,’” which boasts “Sweeping Hudson River Views from every room.”

For more photos and information, check the listing by Tiffany Kogen of Keller Williams Realty. Many thanks to Patrice, the homeowner, for sharing it with us! She also set up a blog where she has posted additional photos of the house that you can see here.

P.S. If you missed my original post about Stepmom, click here.

TV/Movie Houses lists all of the others I’ve featured, including the sets from The Family Stone and Father of the Bride.

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The Cape Cod Beach House from “Sleeping With the Enemy”

by HOOKEDONHOUSES on MAY 23, 2011

When Julia Roberts fakes her own death in the 1991 movie Sleeping With the Enemy, she flees this contemporary Cape Cod beach house where she had lived with her abusive husband, played by Patrick Bergin. Just like her marriage, this house looks good at first, but we soon learn that it’s a kind of isolated prison for her.

Tortured wife Laura Burney spends a lot of time looking out at the ocean. Later in the story, we learn that it’s because she is planning to escape in it.

This Cape Cod beach house isn’t really on the East Coast. According to several sources, including Elle Decor, the exterior was the Shell Island Resort Hotel in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. They say it was shot from angles that obscured enough of the building to make it appear to be a house.

However, when I looked up the Shell Island Resort Hotel, this is what I saw:

It’s hard for me to believe any kind of angles could make this look like the house in the movie. When I mentioned it on Twitter, a reader named Evie tweeted back to say that a single-family home was used for exterior shots, not the resort. She adds that it still stands on Figure Eight Island near her family’s beach house.

*8/11 UPDATE: A reader sent me photos of how the beach house facade looked during filming. Here’s the front:

And here’s how it looked from the back, revealing that it was only a shell:

Big thanks to Mike in NC for passing these photos along!!

According to IMDb.com, the interiors were filmed separately: “Filmmakers created a 3,000-foot temporary structure on Shell Islanta, a man-made extension on the north end of Wrightsville Beach. The house overlooked Mason Inlet and nearby Figure Eight Island. After wrapping, 20th Century Fox demolished the house and restored the dunes to their original condition, planting sea oats and beach grass (from A Film Junkies’ Guide to Wrightsville Beach).”

An article in The New Yorker cites Cathy Whitlock, author of Designs on Film, on the topic:

A beach house was built from scratch for the film ‘Sleeping with the Enemy.’ Whitlock writes that the entire design concept for “Sleeping with the Enemy,” kudos for which go to production designer Doug Kraner, was centered on the notion that the film would be divided visually into two worlds: Laura’s secluded life at the beach house with her abusive husband, and her “new” life in a small town in Iowa with Ben, the painfully dorky drama professor.

Looking into the house from the outside, we see Laura sitting at the vanity in the bedroom:

The kitchen is gray, sleek, and modern. The whole house seems to reflect Martin Burney. Laura spends a lot of time in here preparing gourmet meals for her husband and hoping that they meet his approval. In her spare time, she arranges flowers in vases. There doesn’t seem to be much else for her to do, besides making sure all the towels are perfectly lined up…

Looking from the kitchen into the living room:

Everything is black and white, including the imposing painting that hangs over the fireplace:

The black floors are so shiny you can see yourself in them:

After Martin beats Laura up, knocking her vase of flowers to the floor, she scrambles to pick up the pieces:

In the bathroom, we see that the hand towels aren’t as straight as Martin likes them to be, and that’s never good…

After Laura “drowns” (or so he thinks), Martin closes up the beach house. In this shot of their bedroom, you can see the walls of windows overlooking the water:

In Roger Ebert’s review of the film from 1991, he questioned a lot of the details:

I kept having questions, such as: (1) If the wedding ring is still in the bottom of the toilet, does that mean the toilet hadn’t been used for weeks? (2) How did the woman in the YWCA class get Bergin’s number at work? (3) How did Roberts pay her mother’s nursing home bill in the six months after she told her husband the mother was dead? (4) How did Bergin know where Roberts lived before she led him there? (5) How is it possible, in a small house, for a man to avoid discovery while slinking around rearranging all of the towels and canned goods? (6) Why would he bother, anyway?

The movie was based on a novel by Nancy Price. Apparently the beach house in the book was kind of a ratty little shack. I’m not sure I would have enjoyed the movie as much if they had gone that route!

If you missed it, check out my post about Julia Roberts’ Victorian Cottage in Iowa that’s currently on the market. Which of these movie houses would you rather live in?

Click Here to See More Movie Houses, like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.

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Julia Roberts’ House from “Sleeping with the Enemy” For Sale

by HOOKEDONHOUSES on MAY 16, 2011

Since I started my Movie Monday series two years ago, I’ve gotten a lot of requests to see the houses from the 1991 Julia Roberts movie Sleeping with the Enemy. Some people ask to see photos of the contemporary Cape Cod beach house, and others are more interested in the sweet post-Victorian house she hides out in when she flees to Iowa.

The beach house isn’t real, sadly, but the charming white house with the green shutters is, and it’s on the market for only $219,000. Here’s how it looked in the movie when Julia’s character Laura sees it for the first time and falls in love with it:

Even though it was supposed to be in Cedar Falls in the movie, the house is actually located on a tree-lined street in Abbeville, South Carolina. Here’s how it looks today, in the listing:

It was built in 1905 and is bigger than it looks, with over 3,000 square feet.

The front porch as it looks today (no swing?!):

Looks to me like the interiors are different. Here’s how the rooms looked in the movie, starting with the foyer and front staircase:

I love how authentic the tile and cabinets look in the kitchen:

Kim Basinger was originally cast in the role of Laura Burney, but when she changed her mind, Julia Roberts took the part instead.

Kevin Anderson played her neighbor and new love interest Ben, but I found him a little creepy. All that early-90s hair didn’t help, I guess.

I like this scene where she messes up the hand towels in the bathroom, and it’s crazy how freaked out I get every time she sees someone has straightened them out again for her (cue the Psycho music). Who knew bathroom towels could be so scary?

Remember when Julia Roberts caused a big kerfuffle by complaining to a Rolling Stone interviewer about how much she disliked filming in Abbeville? The town collected money and bought an ad in Variety that read, “Pretty Woman? Pretty Low!”

In her bedroom, with a view of the bathtub across the hall:

Now here’s how the rooms look in the listing today, starting with the front door:

The kitchen looks totally different than it did in the movie. And the ceilings are huge!

There’s no claw-foot tub to be found in this bathroom:

Too bad the rooms don’t look more like they did in the movie. If anyone knows where they filmed the interiors for sure, let us know. I read that it was all shot in Abbeville somewhere. Could have been a temporary set, I guess, or inside a different house. The websiteSCIWay has more information about the filming locations and does mention that they built a separate bathroom set, but no mention of the rest of the rooms.

I love the front porch, though:

Come back next Monday and we’ll take a look at the contemporary Cape Codbeach house Julia Roberts’ character left behind…

*UPDATE: You can see the photos of the beach house here.

For more photos and information about the house, check the listing by Patti Nickles for Prudential. Thanks to Jonathan for telling me about it!

Click Here to See More Movie Houses I’ve Featured!

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