Big-name neighbors: 9 celebrities who own homes in Texas

Learn about nine celebrities who call Texas home, from natives to first-timers who fell in love with the Lone Star State.

Texas is such a great place to live that many celebrities have made it their home. Some of them lived here for a few years before selling their homes, like Emma Stone, Sandra Bullock, Dennis Quaid, and Elijah Wood. Others grew up here and still have family nearby. No matter the reason, Texas is quickly becoming a second (or first!) home for the rich and famous.

Whether celebrities come for nostalgic purposes, to take advantage of better tax benefits, or to try out country life, it doesn’t matter. We’ll welcome everyone to the Lone Star State with open arms and a dose of big Texas hospitality!

Check out a few of our renowned neighbors—including actors, singers, Olympians, and tech tycoons—below.

1. Matthew McConaughey

Alright, alright, alright—with his Southern charm and deep Texan roots, is it any surprise that Matthew McConaughey lives in the Lone Star State? The “Dallas Buyers Club” star, born in Uvalde, moved to Austin in 2014 with his wife Camila Alves and their kids, Levi, Vida, and Livingston.

According to Hello, the McConaugheys live in a 10,800-square-foot Spanish-Mediterranean style mansion, which features eight bathrooms, seven bedrooms, a guest house, and seven boat slips near the lake. The “Interstellar” star reportedly purchased his home for around $6 million, per Realtor.com.

“This has always been home. I have a great relationship with time, meaning 60 seconds feels like a minute. A mile feels like a mile. I like to live in a place where I have a good relationship with time…” he said in a 2024 interview on TODAY about living in Texas. “My family’s here,” he continued. “My mom’s here. She’s 92. … We have resources here. We have a backbone of security here.”

“I did want to come back when Camila and I started a family. I wanted them to have what I grew up around,” he said.

McConaughey still works in Hollywood some of the time, but he is leaning into his Texas background, too. He teaches a film course at The University of Texas at Austin, his alma mater, and often attends football games. It turns out, you can take the man out of Texas, but you can’t take Texas out of the man!

2. Glen Powell

“Twisters” star Glen Powell bought a home in Texas in 2024, returning to his hometown of Austin, where he was born. Powell briefly attended the University of Texas before moving to Hollywood at age 19. According to My San Antonio, he now owns a $4 million estate in the Barton Creek neighborhood of Southwest Austin, with five bedrooms, five bathrooms, a guest house, a chef’s kitchen, and outdoor entertaining spaces.

“My house in Austin, pretty much every square foot is designed around how to maximize Texas football-watching parties and college football game days,” Powell told PEOPLE in April. “So I have a state-of-the-art barbecue system, so people are going to be eating very well and eating a lot of Smash this fall, when hopefully Texas wins a national championship.”

Powell’s parents, sisters, and their families all live in Texas, so it makes sense that he wants to return to his roots, which he said, “just feels comfortable and it feels right.”

Fellow Texas native McConaughey convinced Powell to move. “He’s like, ‘Hollywood is the Matrix, man. You plug in and it’s all fake world,’” the “Hit Man” star told The Hollywood Reporter. “He’s like, ‘Then I go to Austin, and I unplug. It’s all real. Those are my friends, that’s my family, my actions matter there.’ And he’s right. If you’re here, you live in the Matrix all the time, there’s no separation of those worlds. And for me, especially as my parents get older and my niece and nephew are growing up, I want a separation of those worlds.”

3. James Van Der Beek

With six kids, “Dawson’s Creek” star James Van Der Beek needed a big space to spread out, which is why he bought a house in Texas. They live outside of Austin in a 36-acre compound, per Realtor.com, with five bedrooms, three bathrooms, balconies with river and sky views, an outdoor space with a pool, and a tram to the river.

“We love it. We have a lot more space,” he previously told Fox News. “We all need a more immediate connection to nature. It’s been a really, really great move, and the kids are really happy.”

He added, “The parks have been amazing. We’ve been going to state parks and the national parks. It’s just one of the benefits of getting out of the big city was getting to a place where we could just have more space right outside our door. It’s a very, it’s a very different life. We watch the sunset. We know what phase the moon is in. We can actually see stars, which is a new thing.”

What a beautiful way to grow up!

4. Simone Biles

Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles is living it up in her home state of Texas, with a brand-new, custom-built home on a lakefront property with her NFL player husband, Jonathan Owens. Their home in Spring has beautiful custom built-ins that still aren’t completed after two years of work, per Realtor.com. Currently, they reside in another home in Spring, which Biles bought in 2020.

Their new home will have a wet bar, a game room, a home theater, a pet spa, and multiple balconies overlooking water when it’s all said and done.

The world-famous gymnast was born in Ohio, but attended elementary school in Harris County.

5. Jared Padalecki

Jared Padalecki has been living in Texas since before it was cool. He and his wife, Genevieve Padalecki, moved to Austin back in 2010 and bought their current house in 2012. The “Supernatural” star and his wife have three kids and live in a modern farmhouse complete with mini horses, chickens, dogs, and bees. The 10,600-square-foot home is profiled in Architectural Digest, and it appears to be the perfect mix of luxe and comfortable.

The “Gilmore Girls” alum is originally from San Antonio and starred in a reboot of “Walker, Texas Ranger.”

“My dream as a child was literally to grow up and live in Austin, as silly as that sounds,” he previously told PEOPLE. And he’s still living the dream!

6. Elon Musk

Elon Musk apparently loves Texas so much that he’s building a $35 million compound here. (Trust me, I get it!) The Tesla founder is reportedly buying three mansions in Austin to create a compound for his 14 children and their respective moms to live in, per The New York Times.

Although Musk has since refuted the compound claim, he might have an even bigger scheme in mind. According to The Wall Street Journal, Musk plans to build his own town on thousands of acres outside the Texas capital in what the publication describes as “a sort of Texas utopia” where his employees can work and live. Several of his companies have headquarters in Texas already, including Tesla and SpaceX, due to the state’s less restrictive zoning laws and environmental and labor requirements than California, where the companies were previously located.

For now, Musk lives in a $50,000 home in Brownsville near his SpaceX headquarters, according to Realtor.com. This is his official legal residence, as he voted at a local polling station here during the 2024 presidential election.

7. Tommy Lee Jones

Tommy Lee Jones is an eight-generation Texan, according to Texas Monthly, so it’s no surprise that he owns a home here, too. The “Men in Black” star grew up in a small town outside of San Antonio and moved around with his family as his dad worked in oil towns. Eventually, he went to St. Mark’s, an elite prep school in Dallas, where he started acting in school plays.

“The Fugitive” star has a ranch on San Saba, where he funds a polo team made up of him, his wife, six other players, and at least fifty horses. He lives in a 150-year-old, two-story limestone ranch house.

He told Texas Monthly: “In the summers, we’ll work cattle, and then at about seven o’clock at night, we’ll start playing polo. We’ll play until about nine, and then when we’re done, we put the meat on the fire and watch the dark come. It’s a good life. Everyone is happy.”

8. Willie Nelson

Country music singer Willie Nelson has lived in Texas for decades on a 700-acre home near the Texas Hill Country called Luck Ranch. And anyone who visits would feel pretty lucky, too.

According to Hello! Magazine, this ranch features its own western movie set, built in the 1980s for Nelson’s film “Red Headed Stranger,” as well as a music venue that hosts the Luck Reunion Festival, and over 70 horses rescued from the slaughterhouse.

In an interview with Texas Highways, Nelson opened up about growing up in Texas. “I have a picture of me about 2 years old riding a milk cow,” he told the outlet. “I’d ride anything that would stand still long enough for me to jump on it. One time when I was really young and dumb, I was riding this calf, and I thought if I tied my hands and feet together, he can’t throw me off. Wrong. He dragged me around town for a while!”

9. Jamie-Lynn Sigler

When it was time to set down roots, “The Sopranos” star Jamie-Lynn Sigler bought a home in Texas. Even though she wasn’t familiar with the area at all, other than a few recommendations from friends. She now lives in a Spanish-style house in Austin, which was profiled in Architectural Digest in 2021.

“During the pandemic, we started to think about our life and what made us happy,” Sigler told the outlet about her and her husband, Cutter Dykstra, and their kids, Beau and Jack. “We were in the mood for an adventure and wanted to try someplace neither of us had ever lived before.”

With the help of L.A. designer Erin Fetherston, she brought “a cool California vibe” to her Texas country home, with cool colors, gorgeous furnishings, and elevated renovations. More importantly, it has plenty of room for a family.

“All I can think about are my kids and the memories and the parties and the family gatherings,” Sigler told Architectural Digest. “We have so much space to entertain and host. That’s all I wanted.”

She’s also falling in love with Texas itself. “I feel like I’m constantly finding out about Austin,” she told Austin Lifestyle. “It’s fun to live in a city and feel like you never stop discovering things about it. Also, lake life is the best life!!! Not to mention the kindness and hospitality we felt from day one, from the previous owners of our home, to new mom friends at my kids’ schools… we felt so welcome.”

Texans are known for our hospitality, after all!

This article first appeared on Good Info News Wire and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Related: 6 legendary Texas animals (and the stories behind them)