The winner of an Academy Award for Annie Hall has appeared in more than 25 films and directed others.

Why do you keep buying Spanish revival architecture?

I'm drawn to my desert past. My father took us to the desert a lot, and I remember places with a very Spanish feel—the missions, for instance. My parents had a home, a little hacienda, just north of Nogales, near the Mexican border. It really all started there, in the glorious high desert.

My sister, Dorrie, and I were also introduced there to the paintings of Maynard Dixon and Edith Hamlin and people who were painting in Tucson in the 1930s and '40s. I have tried, along with my sister, to put together a small collection of paintings, specializing in western art and regional artists. I keep them in my home, a Spanish in Beverly Hills. It's a rental, but I finally found another hacienda to buy and I'm fixing that up—a courtyard house from the '20s, very simple.

Why southern California houses instead of those elsewhere?

Because I'm a California girl and because it's my own history. I feel defensive about the West. I feel it's underrated and people like to slam it and slam Los Angeles for not taking pride in its architectural splendor. As far as private residences go, all the great architects came to California and built stunning houses—Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra and Frank Lloyd Wright. We have Frank Gehry, who's doing the Disney Music Hall. It's just so varied. And there are all the Spanish colonial revival architects working there, like Wallace Neff, George Washington Smith, and Roland Coates.

Why did you buy the Lloyd Wright house near Griffith Park that belonged to Ramon Navarro?

It had curb appeal. I owned it for seven years, and it was fun. I sold it because I had a family and it was more of a single person's house. It wasn't the house I sold to Madonna. That was the Wallace Neff, a Spanish home.

Is finding authentic furnishings for them part of the appeal?

Yes, it's simultaneous. Basically, that means Monterey furniture. My sister and I have parlayed ourselves quite a collection of beautiful Monterey pieces, and they really are synonymous with Spanish colonial revival homes in California, which is finally starting to document its own cultural history. Roger Renick has edited a book, Monterey: Furnishings of California's Spanish Revival, beautifully illustrated from a show at the California Heritage Museum. It's very exciting  to see people interested in preserving California's rich cultural past.

You've talked about communities expressing pride through preservation. What do you mean exactly?

In the flats of Beverly Hills, there are still blocks of homes that for some reason have retained their original beauty. It's sad that so many get ripped apart. I'm always thrilled when they survive. Like in Pasadena, which is a kind of California bungalow heaven. And there are clusters of these in L.A., too—in Larchmont, and Hancock Park, which has retained pride in the original architecture.
Having directed a couple of movies, I know that locations are everything. You need them. The film community would do well to participate in the preservation movement to a much greater degree, because they're constantly in need. How do you do Chinatown or L.A. Confidential without the original locations? The film industry should become much more involved in preserving the past.

If you could own any old house, which would it be and what would you do with it?

There's a home illustrated in the book Casa California. I saw that house, in Hancock Park. I was just driving along and thought, "That house is so spectacular." Then I had the good fortune to meet the man who owned it, and he took me on a tour, which was my dream, and I tried to buy the house. He said, "No way, lady." I wouldn't do anything to it, just live in it and preserve it.

There was this house that Jayne Mansfield owned and was formerly owned by Rudy Vallee. When Jayne owned it, she painted it pink and built that very famous pool that was heart-shaped. Engelbert Humperdinck bought it at some point, and two years ago it was for sale. I passed it every day when I took my daughter to school. It was pink, and hard to avoid right there on Sunset Boulevard, and I looked at it when it was for sale and thought about buying. It was a very special home, and the other day I was driving my daughter to school, and it wasn't there. They tore it down. It's totally gone. Leveled. That's always sad for me.

Houses enrich our lives with their history and the beauty of the architecture, or the eccentricity, the details. You have to try to preserve some originals, like Paul Williams'. He built so many houses in Los Angeles, and a lot of those are going. Brad Pitt bought a Wallace Neff house with his wife, Jennifer Aniston, and preserved it. I think highly of them for that. They could just as easily have not, but they knew. They felt something for this house.

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