I haven’t been getting much sleep the past few nights and it’s all Jason Priestley’s fault. His new book, Jason Priestley: A Memoir, has me burning the midnight oil. The chapters are brief (most only a page or two) and begging to be perused. I find myself repeatedly thinking ‘I’ll just read one more,’ and the next thing I know it’s midnight. Ah, well, the fatigue has been worth it. The tome is fabulous and enthralling. I cannot more highly recommend it – especially since JP includes the addresses of quite a few stalking locations, one of which is the apartment building where he lived shortly before landing his life-changing role on Beverly Hills, 90210. So Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I ran right out to stalk the place last week while I was in L.A.
[ad]
In the fall of 1987, 18-year-old Jason and his good friend/fellow actor Bernie Coulson moved into a two-bedroom unit at the Klump Regency apartment building located at 5050 Klump Avenue in North Hollywood. JP describes the place as “your basic Valley craphole.” During the eight months that he lived on the premises, JP would vary between traveling back and forth to his native Vancouver for small film and television roles and auditioning in L.A. where he was trying to make it big in Hollywood. On one occasion after returning home from a Canadian shoot, Priestley walked into his bedroom to find a “tall skinny” guy asleep in his bed. That lanky man turned out to be none other than a young Brad Pitt! Brad, whom JP calls “the nicest Midwestern guy imaginable,” Bernie and Jason continued to live in the apartment for the next few months, with Pitt crashing on the couch.
In mid-1988, Brad rented a two-bedroom duplex on La Jolla Avenue in West Hollywood (where he lived for several years afterwards, according to Jason) and invited JP and Bernie to move in with him. Because the Writers Guild of America strike was making roles hard to come by at the time, Jason chose instead to temporarily relocate to Vancouver. It was not long before he returned to L.A., though, and landed the role that would turn him into a household name.
Thanks to Jason’s not-so-keen description of the place, I was expecting Klump Regency to be rather dingy, but it is actually pretty nice. You can check out some interior photographs of one of the building’s two-bedroom apartments here. According to Zillow, the 50-unit complex features a swimming pool, Jacuzzi, gym and laundry facilities. Not too shabby digs for a bunch of struggling actors!
For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Klump Regency, Jason Priestley’s former apartment building, is located at 5050 Klump Avenue in North Hollywood.