Actor John Goodman decided long ago that the Hollywood scene was no longer for him.
Goodman, who recently showed off a 200-pound weight loss, cited his decision to leave the entertainment industry scene, once telling Garden & Gun magazine, “he’d kind of had it with showbusiness and the publicity.”
“I wanted to get away from Los Angeles. The options were St. Louis or New Orleans,” Goodman, 71 and a native of Missouri, said, adding that he also wanted to get his child away from that world.
Goodman moved to New Orleans with his wife, Anna Beth, and daughter, Molly, in 1989.
“We got as far as buying land in St. Louis. But Anna Beth started designing a house that got to be the size of Buckingham Palace and I said, ‘This ain’t gonna work out.’ So we chucked it and bought a haunted house [in Old Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans] instead.”
That said, their first home in the Big Easy — a three-bedroom, 5.5-bathroom gated estate that occupied nearly 7,800 square feet — did not give the them the brightest of welcomes, particularly from the spiritual realm.
“My first house in New Orleans … and I don’t believe in this stuff … but I think we lived in a haunted house,” Goodman said. “There was just too many unexplained things that went on in this place. Plus, it just emanated bad vibes.”
“I’m a real skeptic, but I heard stuff that’s unexplainable and other people had experiences,” he added. “My daughter used to play bells in the Isidore Newman School band and she practiced this one song over and over. My brother was in the house alone and he heard the song, so he went down to see where Molly was, but there was nobody there.”
They decided then to leave and move into their next home in the city, in the prime Garden District, in 2005. The five-bedroom, four-bathroom estate is where they remain today.
Known for his roles in the television series “Roseanne” and the film “Argo,” Goodman purchased the home for $1.8 million at the time from Trent Reznor, the frontman of Nine Inch Nails.
Reznor had owned the residence for 10 years, property records show. Goodman made the purchase through a trust.
The two-story white-painted house, built in 1850, was listed for $1.97 million at the time. The Goodmans have since made a series of renovations, including expanding the property.
Features include a pool and a two-car garage.
In the 1800’s, the house belonged to Joseph Merrick Jones, a doctor and professor of medicine at Tulane University; there’s a hall named for him on Tulane’s campus.
New Orleans has referred to Goodman as one “of their adoptive sons,” and his love for the city strengthened over time.
“It all started in 1972. I came down for Mardi Gras with a group of Sig Eps from Missouri — I went to what’s now called Missouri State. I just flipped for the city, and I’m too lazy to define what it is, exactly. After that, every time I’d get a couple of bucks, I’d go down.”
It’s also where the animated actor first met his wife.
“We came down for a Halloween party and I wound up at Tipitina’s, and this beautiful girl walks up to say hi. I was liquored up and I couldn’t pull up any Noel Coward–like ripostes. I think I said something like, ‘Duh, what?’ She thought I was a jerk and walked off and then I kind of stalked her, but I finally asked her out the next year.”
Goodman explained in a separate interview with CBS that New Orleans gave him a new perspective on life, a cause to pause.
“The air carries music, the air carries the aroma of food. You can smell the river, you can smell the sea. It’s ooh la la,” he said.
“I’m learning the important things in life — petting my dogs, saying hi to my wife, looking at this beautiful city. Just little things that I just missed. That I just slept through for 30 years.”