Johnny Depp's House: His Los Angeles Castle and Other Homes

Johnny Depp has owned the same house in Los Angeles since October 1995: a turreted castle on a hillside, built between the wars for an inventor's wife and known over the years as the Fairy Lady's Castle, the Dream Castle and Dracula's Castle.

It is the one holding of his that has stayed put. The five penthouses he bought downtown are sold, the village he restored in Provence was put up for sale in 2015 and we found no report of a sale, and the estate he bought in Somerset in 2014 is where he told a local magazine in 2023 that he could live quietly.

He bought the castle in October 1995, the Los Angeles Times reported that month. Jon Ponder's West Hollywood History says he bought it from a bank, after its previous owner, the palimony lawyer Marvin Mitchelson, went bankrupt. He paid $2.3M, by the Los Angeles Times' 1995 account and West Hollywood History's. The purchase came a year after Depp played the title role in Ed Wood, and that timing gave the 1995 coverage its angle. Hello magazine reported in 2022 that he owns five neighboring houses on the hillside and has made them into one private compound. The county's build year, the 1995 purchase and the address we keep behind the ropes are on Johnny Depp's Los Angeles castle profile.

Mount Kalmia, before Depp

Hersee Carson built it and named it Mount Kalmia, after a flowering laurel whose leaves are poisonous enough that farmers called it lambskill, West Hollywood History says. Work began before the stock market crash of October 1929 and ran on into the Depression, and she and her husband, the inventor George Carson, moved in in 1933.

When it was built depends on whom you ask. The county's property roll dates the main house to 1922, the same year a 1995 Los Angeles Times report gave. Hollywood.com said 1927 in 2008. West Hollywood History cites the assessor's date as 1930, which is probably the roll's "effective year," a later date the county assigns when a house has been substantially altered, and it leans toward 1932, the year it says most sources give. No permit record we could reach settles which is right.

Carson's years there ended badly, West Hollywood History says. George divorced her in 1934 and died soon after. She sued and won the house, sold its furnishings to keep going, fell behind on her taxes and lost it. Until she left for good in 1940, she kept up a Christmas party she had started for orphaned children, with her cook dressed as Santa Claus handing out the presents.

The Dracula story

When Depp bought the house, the news repeated an old line. The Los Angeles Times report that the Deseret News carried on October 16, 1995 said Bela Lugosi, the screen's Dracula, had owned the castle in the 1930s, a neat fit for a buyer who had spent the previous year playing Lugosi's last director.

West Hollywood History calls that a story Hollywood tour guides told visitors, and its account of the 1930s puts Hersee Carson in the house for the decade.

The studio village that stayed on paper

From 1972 to 1977 the castle was leased to Gary Kellgren, a co-owner of the Record Plant recording studios. West Hollywood History, the only source we found for this chapter, says he spent about $150,000 on plans to ring the castle with a medieval village of thatched cottages where visiting musicians could stay.

Mitchelson bought the house in 1980, according to the 1995 Times report, and held it until the bankruptcy that brought Depp his chance.

Los Angeles or West Hollywood

Almost every account, West Hollywood History's included, puts the castle in West Hollywood. The county's roll places the parcel inside the City of Los Angeles. The two cities meet in these hills, and by the county's reckoning the castle sits on the Los Angeles side.

The 2017 version of this page needs two more corrections. It called the house a gothic castle, while West Hollywood History says most sources describe the design as Norman. And it put the 1995 purchase price at $1.8M, which neither the 1995 Times report nor West Hollywood History supports. Both accounts give $2.3M. We have not yet read the county's deed.

The downtown penthouses, sold

Depp's other Los Angeles holding is gone. In 2007 he bought five penthouse condominiums at the top of a 1930 Art Deco tower downtown, designed by Claud Beelman and turned into condos in a $30M conversion in 2006, per the Los Angeles Conservancy. He joined three of them with doorways as his home and used the other two as an art studio and a guest suite, The Hollywood Reporter wrote when they went on the market. The building's history and the sales are on Johnny Depp's former downtown penthouses.

In September 2016 he asked $12.78M for all five together, Forbes and The Hollywood Reporter reported. They sold one at a time instead. The fourth went in the summer of 2017 for $1.82M, and the last, a two-story unit Forbes called industrial in style, closed that November for $1.425M, which Forbes's headline rounded to $1.42M.

Our 2017 page said he had sold the remaining units for $12.78M. That was the asking price for the set, and no source we found gives a combined sale total.

The village in Provence

In 2001 Depp bought an entire village in the commune of Le Plan-de-la-Tour, north of Saint-Tropez, and spent $10M turning it into an estate, Fortune reported. The Guardian counted more than a dozen buildings, with stone houses dating back to 1812. Among them are a village church converted into a guest house, a restaurant and bar, a painter's studio, a wine-tasting cave themed on Pirates of the Caribbean, and a skate park.

He first put it up for sale in June 2015, at $26M by Fortune's account of a Wall Street Journal report, and at £16.5M in the Guardian's. Some 2015 headlines said he had sold the village, but the stories under them, the Fiji Times's among them, describe it going up for sale. In 2016 the ask was about $55M, per the Wall Street Journal as relayed in a July 2016 Hoffman Team post. In 2021 it was about $55.5M, per Gentleman's Journal. We found no report of a completed sale.

Our 2017 page put the village ten miles from Saint-Tropez. Fortune placed it north of the resort without giving a distance, and nothing we read supports the ten. That page also named the village restaurant, and we could not trace the name to any source. We do not map the village, because no source we trust places it more precisely than the commune.

Somerset, where he says he lives quietly

Depp bought an estate in Somerset, in south-west England, in 2014, The Independent and Entertainment Tonight both reported in 2023, ET citing the Evening Standard. The Independent put the price at £13M. A later edit of our page dated the purchase to 2023, which was the year he talked about it.

In an interview for the April 2023 issue of Somerset Life magazine he described a quiet life there. “British people are cool and will greet you as if you are a neighbor without going over the top,” he said, as Entertainment Tonight quoted it.

The island

In July 2004 Hello magazine reported that Depp had bought a small island in the Bahamas' Exuma chain, inside a protected land and sea park, for $3.6M. Our 2017 page said it had since gone up for sale. We could not find a source for that, and the line is gone.

For the rest of the city, start with celebrity homes in Los Angeles, and read how we handle celebrity addresses.