Serene Queen

When Glee Alum Lea michele isn’t shooting her tv series, scream queens, She’s nesting in her L.A. Sanctuary, hanging with friends and cooking up a storm.

- Joanna Bober

A neat stack of vintage Barbra Streisand albums rests in a corner of actress Lea Michele’s modern two-story Los Angeles home. Framed black-and-white photos of the iconic songstress from her ’60's-era Funny Girl days hang nearby. A Judy Garland biography sits on a bookshelf in the living room. Not far away is a photo of Michele embracing her friend and Spring Awakening co-star Jonathan Groff, an ethereal image that appeared on a poster for the 2007 Tony Award–winning musical.

Music is clearly the through line in Michele’s life (at only 8 years old, she launched her Broadway career in Les Miserables as the young Cosette), and yet, she says, some of the happiest times she’s spent in this house have taken place without any soundtrack at all—unless you count the trill of the birds outside the glass doors that lead to the pool area. “Sometimes I listen to music when I cook, or if I take a bath,” she says. “But I’m also fine to just have it be quiet. I like to keep the doors open to the outside. When I’m driving, I don’t play music much either. It’s a very busy world, there are so many people around, and it takes up a lot of your energy, so it’s nice to have that peace.”