Amanda Peet’s Place// Vanity Fair 

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Amanda Peet, in a Band of Outsiders dress, with daughters Molly, far left, and Frankie (both in Wovenplay), in the grapefruit orchard.

Amanda Peet has created an oasis of outdoor living for her family in Los Angeles.

When dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker Amanda Peet was finally persuaded by her husband, screenwriter David Benioff, to put down roots in Los Angeles, her first impulse was to bring a bit of Tribeca loft to the Hollywood Hills: Her architect, Brad Floyd, built her the same kitchen on both coasts. But gradually, the Californian environment and the charms of the Spanish-style house—which Peet and Benioff had fallen in love with by chance while walking in the neighborhood—worked their way into the design, and a wonderfully open, colorful, and luxuriant flow of spaces was created by Floyd and garden designer Miranda Brooks for the couple to enjoy with their two young daughters. “Just opening the doors in the morning and smelling the garden . . . ,” Peet enthuses in a true convert’s tones, “it’s priceless.”

Tailoring the layout of a house built in 1927 (it was once owned by James Cagney) to today’s more informal priorities took a little doing. “Kitchens used to be off where nobody went, dark and separate, and we had to bring it back center stage,” says Floyd, who gutted the floor plan at the back of the house to move the kitchen toward the garden and open it up with French doors onto a porch where five-year-old Frankie and two-year-old Molly like to eat ice cream after supper. Built-in sofas around the table, cushioned in a mix of striped and flowered textiles, add to the relaxed, vibrant feel. “I see a lot of homes that are supercool,” the actress says, “and everything is very tasteful, but it’s not warm. I’m really scared of rooms that look too serious.” To help her interiors stay playful, she leans heavily on John Derian’s handcrafted aesthetic for inspiration, as well as the freshness and intimacy of Provençal style.

Before she had children, Peet says, she promised herself she wouldn’t be one of those moms who put their kids’ artwork up all over the house, “but then Frankie started drawing these crazy family portraits I like more than a lot of the stuff I think about buying.” Sure enough, happy squiggles and blobs are on display alongside an eclectic array of contemporary paintings and drawings, assembled with the help of Rachel Greene, an old friend turned art adviser. “Amanda’s very willing to fall in love, but she is also staunchly unpretentious,” says Greene. “She’s drawn to things that are personal to her but that are also romantic.” Peet has pieces by Simone Shubuck, Ed Ruscha, and Hugo Guinness, as well as a self-portrait by Cindy Sherman as Lucille Ball, and a Mary Ellen Mark photograph of Jessica Lange and Dustin Hoffman, in drag in Tootsie (her all-time favorite movie)—a birthday present from her husband. 

Reimagining the outdoor space as a family haven, Brooks closed off what had been a driveway to the back of the house that she recast as an arched outdoor passage, and enclosed the edges of the garden with cypress trees and climbing plants for greater privacy. The pool, once located in the center of the lawn, was moved to the back of the property and redesigned by Floyd and Brooks. They set it next to a large, Spanish-inspired outdoor kitchen and living room with wide, lilac-cushioned daybeds, although, says Peet, “our idea of entertaining is putting a huge blanket on the ground, and all of the kids just sit around. We do the blue-hair special,” she jokes of their family-oriented dinner hour. A safety fanatic, she also made sure to plant “prohibitively thorny roses along the walls of the pool” to discourage an adventurous child from climbing over.

With her urban background, Peet initially challenged Brooks’s ideas, which were often based on smell and creating romantic spaces for the girls to play fairies in—until she saw the results. “I didn’t understand how special it was going to be until my garden exploded in the most exquisite fragrances,” she says. “Depending on where you’re sitting, something new and incredible wafts through the air”—jasmine, lavender, rosemary. What to do with the main lawn was briefly a tussle when Brooks suggested planting a grapefruit orchard. “I thought it was going to look self-conscious and like a hotel, and instead they look amazing—and we eat so much grapefruit in this house!” The lawn still has room for games, like the Frisbee Peet likes to play with her husband. “It improves our marriage,” she wisecracks. “I highly recommend it. It’s about how much we can make the other one run for it.”

Given the business that Peet and Benioff work in, home is all the more special for being elusive. They have spent many months over the past couple of years in Belfast, Ireland, where the hugely successful HBO series Benioff co-writes, Game of Thrones, is filmed. In addition to her new NBC series, Bent, Peet has been working on Seth Gordon’s upcoming comedy Identity Thief, with Melissa McCarthy and Jason Bateman, and a new Terrence Malick project. Los Angeles has now become a refuge not only for Peet, Benioff, and their daughters but also for her mother, who has a room next to the garden downstairs, and her sister and brother-in-law, hardworking doctors in Philadelphia whom she encourages to visit as often as possible to unwind. And the house has clearly worked its magic on Peet. “The eating hour, with shrieking laughter and naked children running around . . . ,” she says. “I love yelling out from the balcony to David and Frankie when it’s 7:00 and they’re still in the pool, looking for the moon, looking for the first stars to come out. It sounds so corny, but it’s a dream come true for me.”

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