Film stars, celebrities lose homes, flee from Los Angeles wildfires

Billy Crystal lost the Pacific Palisades house where he had lived since 1979. Paris Hilton watched her Malibu beach mansion burn down on live TV. Jamie Lee Curtis, James Woods, Mandy Moore, Mark Hamill and Maria Shriver were among the other celebrities forced to evacuate as out-of-control fires in Los Angeles swept across some of the most lavish real estate in the world.

The largest blaze consumed nearly 12,000 acres (5,000 hectares) in Pacific Palisades, a picturesque neighborhood between the beach towns of Santa Monica and Malibu that is home to many film, television and music stars.

The $6.5 million home of “Gossip Girl” star Leighton Meester and her husband Adam Brody of “The O.C.” went up in flames.

Perennial Oscars host Crystal and his wife Janice said they were heartbroken to lose the Pacific Palisades house where they had raised their children and grandchildren since 1979, “but with the love of children and friends we will get through this”.

Reality TV star Hilton said she was “heartbroken beyond words” to lose her beachfront mansion.

“Sitting with my family, watching the news, and seeing our home in Malibu burn to the ground on live TV is something no one should ever have to experience,” she wrote on X.

Shriver, a journalist and the former first lady of California when she was married to then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, said the destruction in the upscale enclave was devastating.

“Everything is gone. Our neighborhood, our restaurants,” she wrote on X on Wednesday. “The firefighters have and are doing their best, but this fire is massive and out of control.”

Woods, a two-time Oscar nominee and three-time Emmy winner, recounted how he fled his house in Pacific Palisades as flames bore down “like an inferno”.

“One day you’re swimming in the pool, and the next day it’s all gone,” he said. He teared up in a TV interview as he described a niece who “came out with her little Yeti piggy bank for us to rebuild our house”.

The Sunset Fire burned through the Hollywood Hills, just above Hollywood Boulevard and its Walk of Fame, across the 101 Freeway from the Hollywood Sign.

With a median home price of $4.5 million, Pacific Palisades is home to celebrities as well as the Getty Villa, one of the most popular museums in Los Angeles.

Oscar winner Curtis said “my community and possibly my home is on fire”.

“It is a terrifying situation,” the actress wrote on Instagram. “Pray if you believe in it and even if you don’t, pray for those who do.”

Moore, known for television series “This is Us” and as the voice of Rapunzel in Disney’s “Tangled”, said she and her family had evacuated because of the proximity of the flames.

“So gutted for the destruction and loss,” she wrote on Instagram. “Don’t know if our place made it.”

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Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in the “Star Wars” films, said on Instagram that he evacuated his Malibu home on Tuesday evening with his wife and dog.

“There (were) small fires on both sides of the road as we approached” the Pacific Coast Highway, he said.