LOWE AND BEHOLD

Actor Rob Lowe’s chiselled features helped make him a huge teen idol during the 1980s in films such as The Outsiders and St Elmo’s Fire.

Now 54, his career is still going strong, with a starring role as Sam Seaborn in political drama The West Wing and more recently a key role in US medical drama Code Black.

Lowe, together with his wife Sheryl, has for many years lived in a suitably Hollywood mansion and estate in Montecito, California, rubbing shoulders with celebrity neighbours such as Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, and Gwyneth Paltrow.

The neighbourhood is 80 miles northwest of Los Angeles between the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Ynez Mountains in Santa Barbara County.

Designed and built for Lowe in 2009, it’s within a three-acre site and includes an eight-bedroom house with its own movie theatre plus a two-bedroom guest complex, a one-bedroom pool building and staff quarters. Other features of the estate, now for sale at $47m, include a tennis court, landscaped gardens, a pool and spa, fountains and a koi pond. More details from toptenrealestatedeals. com

Joanna also re-installed a coal-fired range for cooking, an Anderson bomb shelter in the garden and an outdoor toilet.

The cosy house, which is in Burtonupon-Stather in Lincolnshire, also features its original tile flooring, period wallpaper, furniture and, of course, there’s no TV. Ironically, Joanna’s sterling restoration work was recently featured on ITV’s Good Morning Britain show, during which academic and 1940s history expert Rob Robertson called her retrograde conversion “incredibly authentic”.

Until recently Joanna was single but, while attending a 1940s themed tea dance recently, found love.

The pair have now decided to begin a new project and have put Joanna’s home up for auction with emoov.co.uk with a guide price of £90,000.

“This property has been a real labour of love and I will be sad to say goodbye but I think it’s time for someone else to enjoy it, and it’s time for something new,” she says.