Is it stressful to decide between a fancy beach house and a desert mansion? It’s time to buy both! That’s the motto James Burrows toasted last year, as records show he bought two luxurious properties — one in Laguna Beach and one in La Quinta, both in the desert. For the two houses, the veteran sitcom director spent more than $18 million.
In spite of Burrows’ celebrity, he is not as well known as he should be. The 81-year-old Los Angeles native first rose to prominence as a director on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” during the 1970s.
As a director of all kinds of TV shows from “Laverne & Shirley,” “Taxi” and “Dear John” to “Two and a Half Men,” “Friends” and “The Big Bang Theory,” he became one of the most prolific television staples in history. During its eight-year run, he directed all episodes of “Will & Grace” and helped create “Cheers,” one of the most popular sitcoms ever. (Burrows directed all 275 episodes of the TV series Cheers, naturally.)
The director of over 1,000 TV show episodes has won 11 Emmy Awards over the course of his 50-year career. Jennifer Aniston, Tony Danza, Debra Messing, Courteney Cox, Ted Danson, Matt LeBlanc, and Matthew Perry attended NBC’s “An All-Star Tribute to James Burrows” special in 2016.
The couple live in a palatial compound in Bel Air, where they own nearly 13,000 square feet of living space, and are primarily based there. The Burrows bought the property in 2004 for about million and then hired famed interior designer Michael S. Smith to redo the entire place. Architectural Digest photographed the guard-gated Bel Air estate in 2009.
Besides owning two multimillion-dollar properties in Wellington, Florida, the Burrowses also have other multimillion-dollar properties. Both of the couple’s new California vacation homes are located within exclusive guard-gated communities, with resort-style amenities and lots of rich neighbors nearby. The Laguna Beach pad, which lies within Irvine Cove – Orange County’s most prestigious gated community – is the bigger, more expensive, and more impressive property.
Located in the Hideaway gated community, the La Quinta Mansion (below) was built for the non-famous sellers and costs about $3.3 million.
This Tuscan-style property is in a gated community called Hideaway. Burrows paid about $3.3 million for it, which was built for non-famous sellers. Located on a 0.34-acre parcel, the 2006 house offers views of golf course fairways, a manmade lake, and the jagged mountains that the desert is known for.
