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When she was first starting out, the 38-year-old actress never wanted to get stuck in one job for too long. After finishing a movie project, she'd take off for a trip to somewhere far away, like Egypt. "I had this idea that I didn't want to know where I was going to be every day", Robin Tunney recalls. "I wanted adventure".
Yet after two seasons as senior agent Teresa Lisbon on the lighthearted crime The Mentalist, Tunney has settled into her long-term gig more smoothly than she would have imagined. Travel will always be a passion, but creating a permanent home she loves has become a priority. In the seven years she's owned her hillside post-and-beam house, she has upgraded it room by room, making her ideal place.
Built in 1950s by a landscape designer (with the help of Univeristy of Southern California architecture students, including a young Frank Gehry), the airy wood-and-glass house doesen't encourage excesses, which suits Tunney's sensibility just fine. "I don't like clutter", she says. "I feel a certain amount of anxiety if things are out when I get home from work. I have to put them away so I can go to sleep."
A model of midcentury modern aesthetics, the house is designed to connect vertical redwood posts with overhead horizontal beams, creating large, open expanses for living. Rear- facing glass walls allow for privacy yet invite the outdoors in. Broad wooden steps lead to a sunken living room with a soaring sloped ceiling; sliding doors open to a shaded wooden deck. "It feels like you're in a treehouse", she says.
At the time she found the house, Tunney owned a tiny New York apartment but was living in LA with her then-boyfriend, an architect, in his modernist Richard Neutra- designed home. After they broke up, the actress looked around for something similar in style until she heard about a place with a rustic look that wasn't yet on the market. "I drove by and thought, this is my house", she recalls. "I wanted something that needed work, that I could grow into". The place survived a series of owners and was looking rickety, but Tunney saw its potential. "It was special", she says "but it wasn't nice".
The actress sold her Manhattan apartment and deliberately took her time renovating and decorating her new home. She removed a dining room wall to open up the space even more (and provide a better view of the garden), then stained the blond wood floors a dramatic soft ebony. "That was one of the things that was easy to do and yet really transformed the interior". In 2006, while co-starring on the Fox series Prison Break, Tunney treated herself to a salwater lap pool and landscaped the garden with a Zen bent (thin bamboo and moss). More recently she restored the house's wooden-slat ceilings (painted green by a previus owner) to their original, natural patina. Her guest bath was also remodeled, with pebble- patterned floor tiles that echo the stone-speckled patio outside.
Though she experimented with colorful accent walls at first, Tunney later opted to tone things down, preferring a neautral setting that complements the warm, earthy tones of the wooden beams and the dining area's slate floors. It also afforded a clean back drop for a mix of retro furniturary designs by Minotti. To add drama and a personal touch, she punctuated the interiors with architectural pottery by David Cressey and surrealistic portraits of women by photographers Loretta Lux and Mallory Marder.
"Many people buy a house and redo it before moving in" says Tunney, who thinks is a big mistake. "What's important to you changes as you live in it. I've been patient, and it has paid off. I think that's what I've done with my life in general. I've never felt like I was in a hurry".
Tunney has come by this "slow but steady" philosophy naturally. The youngest of four children, she apparead in numerous TV commercials as a kid growing up in Chicago. Then she studied acting and ultimately moved to LA to build her career. With her lightly freckled skin, celadon eyes, and dark brown hair, she can play innocent or edgy and starred in such 90's cult film as The Craft and Empire Records. Her close-knit family back in the Midwest ("we're 100 percent Irish- and very proud of it. we had green satin coats that said South Side Irish) has kept her well grounded throughout her career. "I've always felt like there was going to be a place for me", Tunney says.
And home, she says, is one of her favourite places. Currently single, Tunney loves hosting family-style dinners with pals (though she admits eight people is her limit). "When I get together with my friends, I'd rather cook than go to a restaurant". Now if only she could do something about those darn marble counters in the kitchen that don't quite fit the spirit of the midcentury modern. "That's my next project", she promises.
(Mark Morrison)
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