Tia Carrere, actress
porch

Subtract one husband, add one empathetic decorator, and what do you get? In the case of former Wayne’s World love interest Tia Carrere, an exotic home and one babelicious party spot. After her eight-year marriage to producer and restauranteur Elie Samaha ended last winter, the star of the syndicated action series Relic Hunter revamped the couple’s austere Hollywood Hills bungalow into a tropical paradise totally in tune with her Hawaiian upbringin, “Everywhere you look you’re like, ‘Wow, that’s beautiful,’ but it’s not off-putting,” says Carrere, 33. “It’s all about balance, and that’s my life right now, finding balance in work and good living.”

The three-story porch at the back of the house provides a vantage point to explore these expanded horizons. “When it’s clear, you can see the Sand Bernadino Mountains,” says Carrere’s interior designer Anthony Pontrello. He decorated the porch, which doubles as a party location, with Buddhas from China and India, a daybed covered in kilim rugs from Morocco and an Indonesian fertility trunk with carvings of men and women.

For Carrere’s first solo party – a do-it-herself send-off before heading to Relic Hunter’s Canadian location for six months – Pontrello transformed the bottom level into a sultry nightclub with paper lanterns and Chinese bird-cages. Carrere is proud that instead of talking shop, her friends were having “real conversations about life, about things that were meaningful.” Adds her actress pal Ava Fabian, one of the guests: “It was her new home” – reads new identity – “that she was sharing with us.”

--People Magazine, Special Home Entertaining Issue - Winter 2000

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