Rod Tidwell’s House from “Jerry Maguire”

People often ask me about my most-wanted unfound locations. Currently, the one that tops my list is the mansion where this Beverly Hills, 90210 publicity photo was taken. But for several years, the locale that held that spot was the Mediterranean-style residence where Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.) and his wife, Marcee (Regina King), lived in the 1996 romcom Jerry Maguire. Try as I might, I just could not seem to find it. Then last June, I finally decided to call in the big guns and asked my friend Michael (you know him from his many The Brady Bunch guest posts, which you can read here, here, here, here and here, as well as his columns on Too Close for Comfort, The Ropers, Life in Pieces, and Fuller House) for some assistance. Per usual, he was successful in tracking the place down. Quickly, too, I might add. While I covered the house in my The Complete Guide to Jerry Maguire Filming Locations post back in December, because the hunt for it was so lengthy (well, on my end, at least), I figured it was worthy of its own write-up.

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Though I had always wondered about its location, I did not actively begin searching for the Tidwell’s supposed Arizona-area home until June 2014, shortly after my friend Mike, from MovieShotsLA, tracked down the restaurant where Bob Sugar (Jay Mohr) fired Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) in the movie. Around that time, I purchased the Special Edition DVD of the flick to listen/watch the video commentary (which was fabulous, by the way – I’ve never seen a commentary done in such a manner before) with Cuba, Cruise, Renee Zellweger, and Cameron Crowe. During their conversation, Cuba mentioned that the Tidwell residence was located in the Thousand Oaks area. In lightening up a screen capture of the exterior of the house, I also noticed that a partial address number, ending in what I believed was “60,” was visible. It was also apparent from my numerous watchings that a very large, very unusual rock formation was situated behind Rod’s pad. I figured that these three clues would make finding the place fairly easy. I was wrong. While I scoured Thousand Oaks for a dwelling situated in front of a large rock with an address that ended in 60, I came up empty-handed.

Two years of searching later and I was still at a loss. So I decided it was time to bring in Michael. I emailed him the above screen capture as well as the three bits of information I had. The following day, he responded saying he had found some very similar looking homes in a Westlake Village development known as Crescent Oaks, which was established in the late ‘80s. You can check out one of those residences here. Though he couldn’t find Rod’s house in that particular community, he figured he was on the right track. From there, the two of us started combing through neighborhoods in the vicinity of Crescent Oaks (along with my friend Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, who I also called in for an assist), but we could not find Rod’s pad anywhere.

Never one to be deterred, I moved on to a different tactic by tracking down Sascha Lorren, who played Rod’s niece in the movie, to see if she remembered where filming had taken place. She didn’t, but thankfully her mother recalled that the Tidwell home was located in the Thousand Oaks area, west/south of the 101. From there, Michael worked his magic and found the residence just a few hours later at 1760 Kirsten Lee Drive in Westlake Village.

How did he do it, and so swiftly, you ask? I wondered the very same thing. As he explained to me, “It was the second area I choose when looking at Google Maps. I was mainly looking for a lot of terra-cotta roofs, a layout of roads that felt similar to Crescent Oaks, and abutting mountains. I knew I was in the right area when I saw that rock. Then I came across an identical house just down the road. And then voila!” Thank you, Michael!

In real life, the home is part of the Three Springs development, which was established in the early ‘90s. As Michael said, “I guess there were 5 different developers for the different tracts. I’d be very surprised if they weren’t the same developers that did those homes in Crescent Oaks a couple years earlier.”

The 2-story dwelling, which was built in 1991, boasts 4 bedrooms, 4 baths, 3,649 square feet, a 3-car garage, a 1.09-acre plot of land, and a swimming pool.

The front exterior of the Tidwell house is only shown once in Jerry Maguire. As you can see below, the residence looks much the same today as it did when the movie was shot 20 years ago, despite the lack of the partially-completed garage addition and other construction paraphernalia, which were set pieces brought in for the shoot. (“Jerry, my house is falling apart. Nobody’s looking out for Rod Tidwell. We don’t know where we gonna live in a year. And I’m supposed to be a superstar, man!”)

Though the front of the dwelling only appeared once in the film, the interior was featured numerous times.

It was most notably the site of the famous “Show me the money!” sequence. Per my new friend Greg Mariotti of The Uncool website, that scene, as well as the rest of the Tidwell home scenes, were the last of the movie to be shot. (I cannot look at the images below without hearing Rod saying, “I am a valuable commodity!” – one of my favorite lines in the film. Makes me laugh every. single. time.)