Rosie O'Donnell

Rosie O'Donnell, who began temporarily taping her popular talk show in Los Angeles (she will remain in L.A. through March 6), has leased a home in the Hollywood Hills for a whopping $20,000 a month. (And -- what a deal -- that bargain rate includes furnishings.) Her show usually is taped in New York but currently is being taped at Burbank's Warner Bros. studios. Warner Bros. apparently is doing well these days; the company located and leased the house for O'Donnell. Paul Czako of Hilton & Hyland in Beverly Hills represented Warner Bros. in negotiation of the lease.

While she's in L.A., the Queen of Nice has even nicer digs: 6,000 square feet, four bedrooms, a gym, and six fireplaces. The gated home, which sits on a wooded lot with a private drive, was built in the 1940s and recently was renovated. Actor Robert Duvall leased the house for a couple of months last year. O'Donnell is scheduled to be honored Feb. 12 during the 10th annual AIDS Project Los Angeles' "Commitment to Life" fund-raiser at the Universal Amphitheatre.

Billionaire sells piece of his fortune

Kirk Kerkorian, financier and billionaire, has placed a parcel of his 31-acre Beverly Hills-area estate on the market at an asking price of $6.5 million. The 11.5-acre includes a Mediterranean-style villa formerly owned by actor Sylvester Stallone for seven years. Stallone built a movie theater and an artist's studio in the five-bedroom, 8,400-square-foot gated house before he sold it back to Kerkorian last year. The home was built in 1981 and includes a projection room, tennis court, and putting green.

Kerkorian, now 80, has divided his estate into several homes, all separate and all of which he continues to maintain. He sold one of those houses to the late congressman and entertainer Sonny Bono, who like Stallone, also sold his portion of the property back to Kerkorian after several years of ownership.

Raymond Bekeris of John Bruce Nelson Associates has the listing.

It's a wonderful life ... for $6.7 million

The late actor Jimmy Stewart's home in Beverly Hills is once again on the market, following a two-month period during which it was in escrow. The asking price this time around is $6.7 million. Stewart, who passed away in July, and his wife, Gloria, who died in 1994 at age 75, lived in the home since they purchased it shortly after their marriage in 1949.

The 6,300-square-foot house, built in 1928, is described as English Country-style and contains five bedrooms and two staff bedrooms. The home sits on approximately 1.3 acres with a three-bedroom guest house. Sharing the listing are Don Robinson, Joseph LaPiana, and Victoria Risko, all of Sotheby's International Realty in Beverly Hills.

Decisions, decisions

Jamie Foxx, star of WB's "The Jamie Foxx Show," has just purchased a $930,000 home in Tarzana, Calif., from Joel Diamond, an entertainment executive and record producer whose accolades include 26 gold and platinum records for Englebert Humperdink and several other recording artists.

It must be nice to have so many options; after deciding to move to Connecticut, Diamond listed his home -- which he'd refurbished twice following the Northridge earthquake -- at $1.3 million. After leasing in Connecticut for a short period last summer, Diamond apparently grew homesick and headed back to Southern California. But instead of moving back into his old digs, he decided he wanted new ones. So he sold his gated house -- containing 5,700 square feet, a gym, a waterfall in the living room, media room, basketball court, and 40-foot pool -- to 30-year-old Foxx.

Diamond's new 8,000-square-foot home in Studio City, although described as a "fixer," outperforms his old one. Purchased for $786,000, the home is an exercise in gluttony, with an environmental chamber that simulates wind, heat, and rain; a 70-foot-long wet bar; four fireplaces; and a gym. Sounds nice, but Diamond isn't stopping there. He's gutting the home and putting $500,000 into it. In fact, Diamond isn't even living in the home right now; his current surroundings (in a hotel) are slightly smaller. He's living there temporarily with his wife, Andrea, and 5-year-old daughter, Briana.

Diamond recently formed a record and film company with a partner and is serving as co-producer for the film "Joe Palooka," based on the comic strip character featured in national newspapers from 1930 to 1984. Foxx, meanwhile, got his start on the comedy club scene before landing a role on "In Living Color" in the early 1990s. He has also starred in supporting roles in the films "Toys" (1992), "The Great White Hype" (1996), and "The Truth About Cats and Dogs" (1996).