And I don’t just mean “has a house in…” but actually spends most of their domestic time there?
Morgan Freeman somewhat famously lives in Mississippi, way away from Hollywood, though he’s in five or six films a year. I’ve heard similar things about Bill Murray and John Goodman. Who else lives somewhere surprising, given the heft of their celebrity and frequency of working?
Sandra Bullock and the director Richard Rodriguez each live in Austin TX I believe and are both quite active. Richard Linklater, too, but he is more indie than even Rodriguez.
Maureen O’Hara lived the last few years of her life in Boise, ID.
Screech from Saved By The Bell lives just outside of Milwaukee. Well, he lives in jail right now, but his primary residence is close by. As I once heard someone say, we like to pretend he doesn’t live here, he’s kind of an asshole.
I know it’s a big city, but Oprah lives in Chicago. Her mom lives in Milwaukee.
Prince lives in Minneapolis, MN. Not the milieu I would have expected him to come from, but then again, where exactly could someone as unique as him arise?
Small towns on the Western Slope of Colorado were home to several celebrities: Hunter S. Thompson lived in Woody Creek (adjacent to Aspen), pop. 210; Joe Cocker lived in Crawford, pop. 431; and Dennis Weaver lived in Ridgway, pop. 924.
Many more (Tom Cruise, Oprah, John Denver, etc.) have/had residences in ski towns like Telluride, Vail and Aspen, but I think Dr. Thompson, Cocker and Weaver all lived semi-permanently in/near their respective towns.
Robert Duvall and Sissy Spacek both live in Charlottesville, Virginia when not working.
Not exactly A-list, but Jim Nabors (and husband) live in Hawaii, though he keeps a home in Sylacauga, Alabama where his sister lives and he visits regularly (or did before his health declined in old age).
His Andy Griffith co-stars Andy Griffith and Frances Bavier both ended their days in small town North Carolina: Andy in a beachfront estate in Manteo (where he got his start as an actor in the outdoor pageant The Lost Colony- still in production- and where he was buried within hours of his death) and Frances Bavier in Siler City, a place she had no connection to until old age but happened to like and where she could live very comfortably on her retirement income.
Mohammed Ali also had a lake place in Berrien Springs, MI. There was a dust-up with a privately owned, but open to the public, beach that operated directly across the lake (Barron Lake) from his property. The beach had a bar and music on weekends and Ali objected to the noise. He ultimately must have won the argument, because the bar closed down, although the beach remained for years afterward.
During the years when Oprah was filming her show in Chicago, she had a country place between LaPorte and Rolling Praire, IN. She spent quite a bit of time there and people would spot her occasionally in the general area going out for dinner.
Yeah, and it’s kind of cool that he made it big. He realized that he didn’t want to raise his family in LA or NY, so he stuck to living where he wanted. He got on planes to go to auditions and he just flew back to be with his family.
Michael Keaton
Dennis Quaid
Huey Lewis
David Letterman
Tom Brokaw
John Elway
Mel Gibson
Maury Povich
Connie Chung
Kiefer Sutherland
Christopher Lloyd
Patrick Duffy