Hollywood Babylon

BRITISH-BORN ED A-LISTER MARTYN LAWRENCE BULLARD SNAGS HIS CALIFORNIA DREAM HOUSE, INJECTING HIS OWN BOHEMIAN FLAIR INTO A HOME WITH A LEGENDARY MOVIELAND PAST.

- Booth Moore

HE DESIGNED TOMMY HILFIGER’S SHAGADELIC ‘60S pad in Miami, Cher’s Buddhist-behaving-badly retreat in L.A., and Kylie Jenner’s playpen in Hidden Hills. But for his latest decorating coup, a Moroccan-meets-midcentury oasis in West Hollywood, Martyn Lawrence Bullard had only himself to please. The house, the ED A-Lister says, “is all me.”

Perched on a hill above the Chateau Marmont, the 1923 Spanish villa has a Hollywood history as impressive as Bullard’s two other homes—the Villa Swanson, built for Rudolph Valentino in Los Angeles, and a Palm Springs hideaway once decked out by Roger Moore in James Bond style.

Bullard’s newest residence has an equally storied past. Ike and Tina Turner once harmonized in its entryway, and in the 1960s its then-owners, young marrieds Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward, entertained a bohemian swirl of old and new Hollywood, rock royalty, and Hells Angels here, with a living room full of art by Andy Warhol and Ed Ruscha.

“I always thought it was the perfect house,” says Bullard, who decorated the home for the first time in the early aughts, when it belonged to the original Daily Show host, Craig Kilborn. So two years ago, when it came on the market, he scooped it up for himself ahead of his pal Melanie Griffith. “It wasn’t right for Melanie—it didn’t have a big enough closet at the time,” quips the star of Bravo’s Million Dollar Decorators, who fancies a bit of Gucci himself and has since added a closet room.