Role of a lifetime

TANNED and fit, Tab Hunter walks down the red brick steps of his Montecito house with the same self-effacing smile that made him a movie star 50 years ago in "Battle Cry" and "Damn Yankees!" The house that lies beyond looks like some classic Hollywood throwback too, the black-and-white marble entry yielding to a view of the garden, blue agapanthus and stately oaks peering through the windows. The scene is a reminder that once upon a time houses weren't built to the lot line, that when newcomers first flocked to Southern California, they sought sunshine and breathing room.

Hunter's property spans more than an acre, but the classic 1928 Spanish-style house by George Washington Smith is only about 2,000 square feet -- all the more space for fruit orchards and an area that the actor calls Villa Debris because of its storage shed and dog run for two whippets.

But no matter how modest in size the house may be, there will always be room for one of Hunter's lifelong loves: antiques.

"I've always collected something. At first it was horse memorabilia, and then little by little I added other things," says Hunter, 76, who had his own Asian-imports shop in Beverly Hills in the early 1960s. Tab Hunter's Far East did well, but it wasn't open long before the actor decided to sell the store. "It had been a fun hobby for the couple of years it lasted, but you can only sell so many Imari plates to Katharine Hepburn," he quipped in "Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star," the 2005 autobiography for which Hunter's partner, producer Allan Glaser, is working on a big-screen adaptation.

That store may be long gone, but today Hunter's house stands as nothing short of a collection of a lifetime, some pieces bought while shooting on location, others acquired from people close to him. "I like having all these things around me because they're my memories of friends and places I've been," he says. "I look around and I see Santa Fe flea market, England, Virginia, Portugal."

His tastes run to the intricately carved pieces of the 17th century English Jacobean period, and furniture from Spain and Portugal -- "the country pieces," he says. "I love patina and a good piece of wood. It sort of speaks to you."