French Actor-Singer Patrick Bruel on Losing His Home in Palisades Fire

Famed French singer and actor Patrick Bruel is one of the many Europeans who had settled in the idyllic L.A. neighborhood of Pacific Palisades. Now, he has lost his home in the devastating wildfire that has been ravaging the area since last week.

He bought the house eight years ago after his two sons, 21-year-old Leon and 19-year-old Oscar, moved there with their mother, the well-known novelist and filmmaker Amanda Sthers. Johnny Hallyday, the late French crooner, also encouraged Bruel to buy a house there and become his neighbor. Hallyday’s house, where his widow Laeticia lived with their two daughters, has now also perished in the fires.

“It’s a small and beautiful village, a place in which we felt extremely comfortable. It’s hard for me even to talk about it in the past tense. I was there five days ago. It’s very overwhelming,” Bruel tells Variety. Today, the affluent Pacific Palisades village has been mostly destroyed by the wildfire, including landmarks such as the Will Rogers State Historic Park.

“I’d left the day before and my son was there. He was on his way to the airport. He said to me, ‘Should I go back home? Should I go try to save things, maybe there’s time?’ I said, ‘No way, don’t even think about it,’” Bruel recalls. “The first thing he thought of was getting back the cuddly toys from his childhood. It was an obsession for him.”

Bruel says his home “was a small house, not a big one like the ones described in the media.” He regrets that “so much of the media focuses on all the famous people and how much their homes were worth because behind these headlines there are lives, there are families, there are stories, memories, things that don’t necessarily have a price tag.”

Above all, he says, “there are some 300,000 displaced people. So many of these people will end up with absolutely nothing. I’m hearing that some insurance companies canceled their contracts six…