Aussie Actress Toni Collette Selling Up In Sydney

SELLER: Toni Collette
LOCATION: Rupertswood Avenue, Bellevue Hill, Sydney, Australia
PRICE: rumored to be in excess of $6,500,000 (AUS)
SIZE: 5 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms
DESCRIPTION: Few residences can summon such a welcoming feel of style, sophistication and ease of family living. This traditional Spanish Mission style residence makes an exceptional entertainers' retreat and a private family sanctuary of immense comfort and charm.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: The other day as Your Mama was whittling away too much time watching wacky 1960 dance numbers like this on the YouTube, we received a clandestine missive from Dottie Downunder who generously informed us that former pizza delivery gurl turned Academy Award nominated Aussie actress Toni Collette and her musician huzband Dave Galafassi were selling up their hoity toity house in Sydney. That's Sydney, Australia chickens. Although listing information does not indicate an asking price, the property is rumored to be priced somewhere in excess of $6,500,000 (AUS), an amount our bejeweled abacus reveals converts to 5,453,435 U.S. dollars at current rates.

Unfortunately for Miss Collette, or perhaps in a divine stroke of professional luck that allows her to be more of an actress than a "celebrity," she's often overshadowed in the Tinseltown fame game by a couple other Academy Award winning Aussie actresses by the names of Nicole Kidman and Cate Blanchett. Although Australian movie goers have watched her in dozens of films and programs not in wide release in the U.S., all us folk in the Northern hemisphere came to know and love Miss Collette in the mid-1990s as the ABBA luvvin' daydreamer Muriel in Muriel's Wedding and later in The Sixth Sense (for which she earned her Oscar nomination) and more recently in the Oscar winning comedy Little Miss Sunshine. Currently Miss Collette is working her stuff as a multi-personalitied muralist and mother in Academy Award winning screenwriter Diablo Cody's United States of Tara on the Showtime.

Previous reports reveal Miss Collette and Mister Galafassi purchased their house on Rupertswood Avenue in the posh and prosperous Bellevue Hill area of Sydney in 2004 for around $5,000,000 (AUS). A few flicks of the well worn beads on our bejeweled abacus shows that converts to $4,194,950 at today's rates, but of course we have no idea what that converted to back in 2004. The property sits about half way between downtown Sydney (the CBD) and beautiful Bondi Beach.

Listing information forwarded by Dottie Downunder shows the fully hedged and extensively secured "Spanish Mission" style crib wraps around a courtyard at the rear and includes 5 bedrooms and 2.5 poopers including a private, airy second floor master with a small but private pooper with a sky light, a sky-lighted walk-in closet and 5 sets of French doors that all open to Juliet balconies overlooking the back yard and the scenic Sydney Harbor in the not so far distance.

A porte-cochere on the side of the house leads to the front entrance and stair hall which acts as the central traffic hub for the entire house. To one side is a sparsely furnished, wood-floored living room with a fireplace, the most marvelous and pristine white walls, a delishus red and yellow area rung and several other red accents in the chandelier, curtains and sconces. It might be nice to have more places to sit in here than just an Eames lounge chair (and perhaps there are but we just can't see them), but we adore the way Miss Collette and her nice gay decorator have worked the color in here. The walls may be white, but this room hardly lacks in color and personality. Adjacent and open to the living room is a sun room with stone floors, a wee dining room set with sunshine yellow upholstered chairs, a day bed (which we'd suggest removing) and a wall of windows that open to the front garden.

Opposite the living room is a large family room that opens through French doors to the courtyard terrace and leads to the sleek kitchen and chandelier-less dining room. Like in the master bedroom directly above, a trio of French doors open the room up to the back yard creating an easy-breezy, well conceived covered patio-like space where Your Mama can imagine whipping up a box cake and reading the morning papers with a giant cup of Joe.

At the center of the rear courtyard is a bubbling water feature and a small deck with an outdoor shower. There is really little Your Mama loves more than showering in the outdoors. For all you people who haven't experienced that little nugget us joy, we recommend it highly. Beyond the courtyard area is a dining terrace and a good sized patch of lawn on which the pooches can piddle and poop with impunity.

Information Your Mama managed to dig up on the interweb shows that Miss Collette recently sold a beach house in Tamarama (near Bondi Beach) as well as an eco-friendly rural getaway a couple hours outside of Sydney where she and the huzband were married in a 3-day long Buddhist ceremony in 2003 and sold in 2008, reportedly for around $1.61M (AUS). Mrs. Sunshine also reportedly owns a home in the Wicklow Mountains area of Ireland, an area we presume she got to know during her torrid romantic liason with Irish actor Jonathan Rhys-Meyers back in the late 1990s. Most reports indicate Mister and Missus Collette and baby are living in Lala Land where she films her series The United States of Tara. As far as Your Mama knows, the couple have not purchased a home in Southern California but then again, maybe they have and we just don't know about it.