Matthew Gray Gubler (and his Fairbanks house)
“I was obsessively searching for a home in L.A. for about four years
before I stumbled upon this magical house in Pasadena. It’s a fairytale
style hunting lodge built in 1927 by silent actor Douglas
Fairbanks. There’s a turret, countless secret nooks, century old trees, a
stone horse stable that doubles as a guest room, and two or three
ghosts that roam the premises as well as an owl. Nature is slowly
swallowing the home as you can see by the night blooming jasmine that’s
crawling into my dining room but I prefer it that way. I guess I am a
hobbit at heart.”“If you look up photos of John [Waters] when he was my age, we are
virtually twins; so a long time ago, I tried to get him to play my dad
on this TV show Criminal Minds.That didn’t work out, but it led to him
asking me to MC his one-man vaudeville comedy show as a younger version
of himself. It went really well, we became friends, and at the end of
this year we will have acted in 3 films together (I’m very proud to say
that he’s currently the actor I’ve been in the most films with.)”“[I would describe my style as] Sherlock Holmes if he played drums for the Beach Boys.”
“I am contemperphobic (if that’s even a word) and went to great lengths
with a brilliant set designer friend to de-modernize what had been
changed about the interior and return it to its original feel. We
replaced the Danish modern metal spiral stair case with burnt wood that
used to be on a boat, and we stained the 1990’s sitcom-colored walls
with turpentine and tobacco to make it look like a gnome has been
smoking a pipe in the house for the last 50 years.”
