Dining Room

"Ugly Betty" star America Ferrera is losing the braces, wrapping up her role on the ABC sitcom and moving on. The actress, who plays a fashion-challenged editor at a style magazine, is relocating to New York for career reasons. She has listed her Hollywood Hills house, with three bedrooms and 3 1/2 bathrooms in 3,427 square feet, at $1,599,000. The master bedroom suite — with two walk-in closets, a corner fireplace and a large balcony — and an adjacent loft-style office occupy the entire upper level of the home, built in 1993.

Television personality and model Kim Kardashian has bought a furnished estate in the Beverly Hills Post Office area for about $3.5 million. The new home was designed, built and decorated by Beverly Hills-based Lucien Lacasse. The Tuscan-style walled and gated house has fireplaces in the dining room, family room, living room, master bedroom and kitchen as well as outdoors. The two-story home includes a screening room, five bedrooms and 4 1/2 bathrooms in about 4,000 square feet.

A Beverly Hills house with a decades-long string of celebrity owners has come on the market at $15.9 million. Designed by Roland Coate and built in 1934 for producer David O. Selznick, who won a best picture Oscar for "Gone With the Wind," the traditional house has a two-story entry, a formal living room, a walk-in bar in the family room, library and dining room fireplaces, a billiards room, an office and two maids' quarters. The dining room features original Greek keystone-shaped marble.

The feel of classic Hollywood permeates a renovated 1920s Spanish Revival home in Whitley Heights that sits on a bluff facing the Hollywood sign and surrounding hillside. An early celebrity enclave, Whitley Heights was Hollywood's first National Historic District and home to such stars as Rudolph Valentino, Bette Davis, Charlie Chaplin and Gloria Swanson. Today the neighborhood's Mediterranean-style homes sit under towering eucalyptus and mature pine trees. "We loved the history of the neighborhood," says James Everingham, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who renovated the house with his wife, Brooke Davis.

Between performing in her lavish Las Vegas show and making movies, Cher still finds time to pursue her other passion: designing and decorating houses. The star's latest project is an 8,821-square-foot luxury compound she just completed in Kona, Hawaii, and plans to sell at auction Jan. 18. Although this is the first time the singer-actress has attempted to sell a residence by auction, she used the process to bring top dollar for the contents of her Malibu house in 2006, when she ended her Gothic Revivalist phase.

The south of France meets Pasadena's South Arroyo in a 1923 Mediterranean Revival house designed by renowned Southern California architects Reginald Johnson, Roland Coate and George Kaufmann. Built near the edge of a bluff, the home has expansive views of the Colorado Street Bridge, the Vista del Arroyo and the San Gabriel Mountains from most of its 15 rooms. A sloping, curved driveway winds from the street past a three-car garage and attached guesthouse up to a circular motor court at the front of the home.

These days, celebrity cooks are as abundant as cheap Chardonnays -- and often about as good. Sure, everybody has rediscovered Julia Child, thanks to Meryl Streep, and many now are slogging doggedly through three nightmarish pages of her recipe for boeuf boeuf bourguignon . But would you really go out of your way to braise pearl onions if all you needed was something to take to the Elks Lodge for a hot dish supper? What if you just wanted a tasty meatloaf that would slice up real nice for sandwiches the next day?

Poured-concrete walls, skylights and automated clerestory windows give an atrium feel to this restored contemporary in Malibu. Built in 1963, the house was originally created for Italian artist Rico Lebrun by Thornton Abell. The Los Angeles architect was recognized for his work in the Case Study House program, which designed models for low-cost modern housing after World War II. But the house was far from its '60s condition when it was bought by the current owners. "It took a year and a half to renovate the back part of the house," says Sandy Mastomonaco, who owns the home with her husband, John.

As I approach the entrance to the new Santa Monica restaurant Cache, I catch a glimpse of a tousle-haired man in a white apron disappearing around a corner. Yes, indeed, Mr. Citrin is in the house and running around like crazy, looking excited and pleased that this new casual-French California restaurant is finally open -- and filled with people. It's a beautiful night, and guests are sprawled on sofas in the outdoor lounge area and trooping in for reservations in the dining room.

A Rudolph M. Schindler-designed house surrounded by gardens that extend even underneath its structure has been restored and upgraded to show off the historic property in the Verdugo Woodlands, originally designed for writer-composer Jose Rodriguez and his family. Built in 1941, the house features varying ceiling heights, clerestory windows and a "floating" second-story bedroom wing that spans the gardens below.