Home is where the peculiarities come out

For celebrities, home decor has taken on a whole new meaning.

KARACHI:

Cartoonist Charles M Schulz once said, “Decorate your home. It gives the illusion that your life is more interesting than it really is.” What Schulz said in jovial mockery has been taken a bit too seriously by certain Hollywood celebrities who have gone to extremes by incorporating mini airports to placing dead oompa loompa’s in their pads just to add spice to their lives.

Travolta’s wings

When my brother told me he was crazy for planes, I knew the most he can do is become a pilot or get himself a toy plane that emits squeaky sounds. But actor John Travolta has taken it to an entirely new level. Travolta’s home in Florida is part house, part airport terminal. He has a two plane pavilions, a Gulfstream II jet and a 7,500-foot runway. According to telstarlogistics.com, The Saturday Night Fever star caught ‘plane fever’ when he was 15. For his home, the actor got inspiration from Dulles International Airport and made a small airport in his home, which even has a small control tower.

Clooney’s extravagance

The Ocean’s Twelve star purchased a 25-room Italian villa, known as Villa Oleandra. The villa is said to have an outdoor theatre, a large swimming pool and a garage for Clooney’s motorcycles. Overlooking a small lake, with a small Victorian white bridge maintaining distance between the water and Clooney’s sight, the villa is reminiscent of romantic sites one gets to see in medieval French films. According to abc.com, Clooney’s house, which belongs to the architectural wave of 18^th century, is a hamlet of 900 residents. Who knew that the actor who has a strong ‘no marriage’ rule would be such a romantic at heart?

Kutcher on wheels

If you thought that caravans couldn’t get any more glamourous, you probably weren’t aware of Ashton Kutcher’s house — which to be honest looks like a giant metal monster. This two-storey, 53-foot long, 30-ton luxury home on wheels has everything you  can dream of. With seven 60-inch 3D plasma TVs, two bathrooms, a full bedroom, a working kitchen, a conference area and more than 1,000 square feet spread across two floors, the actor won’t get bored during shoots of his new comedy show “Two And A Half Men”. The exterior of this house may not be approved by your mother as ‘homely’, but the interior of it lives up to its ‘villa on wheels’ label.

Burton indulges in macabre

Tim Burton’s den looks more fit for a Halloween party than for human settlement as it has props and puppets from his films incorporated in the decor of the house. The director — who is known for his eccentricity in films like Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and Sweeney Todd — loves to take mementos home and now he has a bizarre movie museum full of his own creations, according to contactmusic.com. Due to its uncanny aura and decor, the exterior of the house looks like the typical dark havelis victims stumble upon in stormy nights.

He tells website wenn, “I’ve got so much crap in the house. I got a really huge chair from Charlie and The Chocolate Factory which everybody loves sitting in because you feel like a little kid.” But his collection of oddities isn’t limited to his own films, “This wax museum closed down and I bought the wax figure of an Oompa Loompa and I have it on the couch,” contactmusic quotes Burton as saying.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 13^th, 2011.