Denise leaves Chicago behind
Denise Van Outen, star of musicals Chicago - which she appeared in on Broadway - and Tell Me on a Sunday, now on in the West End, seems keen to settle down in London with her new love, Richard Traviss. She owns a small two-bedroom flat in Islington but is looking for a larger pad to share with Traviss, owner of Covent Garden club Brown's. Favourite areas are Fulham, Chelsea and Notting Hill.
Oscar-winning actress Jessica Lange is a former tenant of a Georgian four-bedroom, double reception-room house in St Leonard's Terrace, Chelsea. Now this south-facing, corner property, including a selfcontained basement flat and garage, is back on the market at £2,000 a week through Susan Metcalfe. But owner Sophie Dugdale is reluctant to let to another star. "Jessica rented the house for six months when she was appearing at the Haymarket in A Streetcar Named Desire," she explains, "She was not the best of tenants and we were extremely glad when she left."
Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey is looking for a London home so he can be more involved with the Old Vic theatre. He is due to direct three plays there next year. Spacey knows the city well having appeared in plays such as Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh and visited as a tourist since the age of six. Based in Los Angeles, "There's nothing I don't like about London," Spacey said recently. "I'm an Anglophile and don't mind the weather at all." Expect to find him looking in Covent Garden, Regent's Park and Marylebone.
Sculptor Julius White, grandson of painter Augustus John, is selling his Notting Hill family home for £1 million through John D Wood. He inherited the Grade II listed house from his mother, artist Vivian John. "The inside has hardly been touched since 1948," says a neighbour. Planning permission exists to extend the property at the rear.
Close your eyes in 17a Gerald Road, Belgravia, and imagine Noël Coward belting out Mad Dogs and Englishmen in the apartment he lived in between 1930 and 1956. The camp, overblown décor disappeared from this spacious studio flat long ago, but it has acquired a modem funkiness instead, with a spiral staircase leading to the raised mezzanine floor. You can rent it for £1,500 a week through Ayrton Wylie.
