Think all celebrities live in mansions? 6 stars with small spaces to prove you wrong

Fame comes with certain assumptions. One of the biggest? Celebrities must live in huge houses. But over the years, we’ve visited a number of A-listers who’ve proved this isn’t always the case. Did you know Matthew McConaughey has an affinity for Airstreams and traveled while living in one for years? Or that Sarah Paulson once owned a 500-square-foot beach house? Admittedly, these aren’t always their full-time residences (and some celebrities have sold their properties since we visited!), but these spaces prove that a sprawling mansion isn’t necessary for a home with plenty of personality. Below, revisit six small celeb spaces.

Lena Dunham’s 1.5-Bedroom Connecticut Home

The actor and writer built the home in her parent’s backyard.

When I was a little kid, I used to dread the idea of ever leaving my parents’ home. I hated leaving for the day to go to school, much less the idea of going to college or getting married. I loved them, and I loved the culture of our family—the free-flowing dialogue about emotion and art and history and gossip and fashion. I couldn’t imagine a better set of pals. But I still wanted my own place.

So I created a number of houses within theirs, starting with pillow forts and graduating to loft beds, with a stop in the middle at a cardboard box with a window cut out in it. I just needed a spot where I could exert my maximalist aesthetic against their minimalist one. (Me: leopard contact paper, hot pink tempera paint, feathers. Them: plywood, gray bouclé, modern photography.) It seemed like the perfect compromise between dependence and solitude.—Lena Dunham

Scout Willis’s 1,000-Square-Foot Hollywood Home

Musician Scout Willis in her charming Hollywood home

“I want people to come to this house and fall in love,” says musician Scout Willis wistfully, imagining the parties that will surely unfold in the charming storybook house in Hollywood that her friends have nicknamed “the Chapel of Love.” “I want people to meet each other here and make out,” she says, nostalgic for the sort of in-person encounters that take place in her recent music video “It Ain’t Nothing,” where she and costar Thomas Doherty lock eyes and graze fingertips amid revelers in a sprawling mansion.

For Willis, though, this time it’s the house itself she fell for. “I walked in and saw this ceiling,” she says over FaceTime, showing off the home’s groin-vaulted entryway, still sporting its original colored plaster. “And I immediately felt it.” The quaint, Normandy-style cottage, built by architect Frederick A. Hanson (best known for his contributions to the Forest Lawn Glendale Cemetery) in the 1920s had been hardly touched since, its yard anchored by an enormous eucalyptus tree. A self-professed “nerd for LA history,” Willis jumped at the opportunity to serve as a custodian for such a unique piece of the city. -Hannah Martin

Milo Ventimiglia’s 27-foot Flying Cloud Airstream

The This Is Us star bought the trailer during the COVID pandemic.

Many people found new interests and hobbies as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Milo Ventimiglia’s case, he finally purchased an Airstream trailer, something he’d wanted to do for years. After taking the 22-foot-long Bambi on a trip across the United States, the actor knew he’d made the right decision. He was an Airstream guy now, and with more trips on the horizon, Ventimiglia sold his original trailer and upgraded to a 27-foot Flying Cloud model.

The star of This Is Us (he is filming season six now), who will also appear on the upcoming season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, says escaping for a road trip is the perfect antidote to the emotional toll of filming such a dramatic show. Recently, to make his space into even more of a cozy retreat, he turned to Lowe’s for some much-needed decor items.—Rachel Wallace

Sarah Paulson’s 500-Square-Foot Beach House

Sarah Paulson didn’t discover her talent for creating homes with what interior designer Amy Kehoe calls “sophisticated whimsy” until she was in her 40s. As a former New Yorker and an actress who has spent much of her adult life on set, buying and decorating a house wasn’t on her lengthy to-do list. “It felt like too much responsibility. Only grown-ups did that, not me,” says the Emmy Award–­winning actress, who stars in the upcoming horror thriller Dust. “I always wanted that Manhattan life, an apartment with a doorman, if you were lucky. Owning a home never held that allure.”

A couple of factors changed her mind. The first is that Paulson is an Angeleno now, and found that she was one of the holdouts in her friend group who hadn’t taken the real estate plunge. Secondly, she found the magnetic pull of Nickey Kehoe, an elegantly understated housewares shop owned by Todd Nickey and Amy Kehoe, too powerful to resist. “I would walk into that store and think, Can I move in?” she says. “When I finally bought a house, I emailed Amy. Then once I started working with her, it was like, ‘Well, you can forget it. Anytime I buy anything, even a car, you’re doing the interior.’ ”—Christine Lennon

Sienna Miller’s Under-2,000-Square-Foot Cottage

When actor Sienna Miller first saw a 16th-century thatched-roof cottage in Buckinghamshire, England, she fell for it hard. “It was a time when there was a lot of press attention on me, and I wanted somewhere to escape. I bought the house on a whim—it offers a sanctuary. I also wanted somewhere where family and friends could gather. It has a nurturing feeling; it is a home with a heart,” she says.

When she isn’t starring in films and television series or onstage (including a role in the Apple TV+ series Extrapolations, set to debut next year), Miller, her daughter, friends, and family spend glorious times at the house. And for more than a decade she left the faded chintz-filled interior with its engineered flooring pretty much untouched. During the pandemic, however, when the urge struck to restore the house, she knew just who to call. “I wanted a Gaby house!” says Miller, referring to her great friend Gaby Dellal’s houses in London and Cornwall, with their wonderful eclectic interiors where vintage fabrics and kilims, industrial fittings, and other homey elements commingle in unexpected unions that exude warmth, impeccable taste, and heartfelt character.—Harriet Quick

Matthew McConaughey’s Malibu Airstream

The actor in his airstream in 2008

He may be known for his easygoing brand of beach living, but Matthew McConaughey, the star of A Time to Kill (1996) and The Wedding Planner (2001), is equally passionate about life on the open road. And if his house can travel with him, well, so much the better. “There’s an old African proverb,” offers McConaughey, apropos of his affinity for wheeled domiciles. “ ‘Architecture is a verb.’ ”

“I’ve always loved drivin’,” he proclaims in his Texas twang. “Drivin’ is, number one, where I get some time with myself. Number two, it’s the main place I catch up on music. And number three, it’s the best way to see the country. In 1996 I got a big GMC van—it’s called Cosmo—and gutted it and put in a bed in the back, a refrigerator and a VCR so I could watch dailies or whatever. But still it was a pretty cramped style. So I started looking at Airstreams.”—Peter Haldeman