Accidental Resident

When Cathy Arden decided to move from New Jersey to California last fall, it was not a decision she made lightly. The actress and writer grew up on the East Coast and spent many years performing in the New York theater district. The East Coast is where she got married (and eventually divorced), and raised her two children. She also gradually drifted out of acting and into writing.

However, when her youngest child finally went off to college in September, Arden decided it was time to move away from “the more introverted profession of writing” and go back to her acting roots. This time, though, she planned to head to Hollywood to break into film and television.

“I officially moved here on Labor Day,” Arden recalls. “I came out in July for two weeks just to look for a temporary place, because I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do, so I decided to look for furnished rentals."

Arden planned to keep her home in New Jersey and rent in LA before making any long-term decisions. She registered with a vacation rentals site and chose to look for places in Santa Monica. “It’s the only place I knew,” she explains. “Because I have friends who live there.”

Arden lined up some properties to visit in Santa Monica and also responded to a listing that purported to be in the “Santa Monica/Mar Vista/Venice region,” she recalls.  The house was in fact on Beethoven Street right in the middle of Mar Vista.

“I didn’t know anything about the area,” Arden says and the Beethoven Street house was the first one she saw. “I walked in and it was just perfect for me,” she recalls. “At the time I thought it was weird that it was the first place I’d seen and it just felt like the place for me.”

Still, Arden had several other places lined up to visit in Santa Monica over the next few days, but by the end of the weekend she decided to rent the Mar Vista home.

“I just fell in love with it,” she enthuses. “I have a lemon tree growing over my deck. All I drink is lemonade and my home feels like I’m living in a tree house.”

Arden moved in in September and found she grew to love the Mar Vista neighborhood as much as she loved her home. She says she couldn’t believe how lucky she was that her landlord was smart enough to list her home as being in Santa Monica, or she probably would never have found the place.

Mar Vista, she says, has definitely got under her skin. “I love how I’m close to so many different things,” she notes. “I can ride my bike to the beach, I discovered a great nail salon, and I love how close it is to the airport. I’m close to the 10 and the 405.”

Arden is also thrilled to have discovered the [Mar Vista] Farmers’ Market.  “[In the six months I’ve been here] it’s the only market I’ve ever gone to,” she says. “It’s not that I don’t want to see other markets,” she adds hastily. “It’s just that I don’t need to go to another one. I can get everything I need there.”

Arden says she goes to the market every Sunday without fail, unless she has a matinee. Yes, she says, a touch of irony in her voice, she moved out to Los Angeles to break into film and television and within a couple of weeks of arriving she landed a role in a stage play.

Arden just completed a two-month run at the Sierra Madre Playhouse in a production of A.R. Gurney’s Sylvia. Arden plays the wife of a man undergoing a mid-life crisis that finds a stray dog (Sylvia) in the park and brings her home. The dog is played by a young woman.

The production has been so successful that it will transfer for another run to the Edgemar Theatre in Santa Monica on May 20.

While Arden says she’s amazed at how fast she has managed to find work, she adds, “I never doubted I would get work. When you have a purpose and a passion you do everything you can to make it work. I’m out here to act,” she says simply. “And I’m doing it. I’m living my dream.”

And now, just six months after moving here, Arden says she’s seriously contemplating selling her home in New Jersey and buying a house here. For now, though, she’s happy to continue sipping home made lemonade in her “tree house” in Mar Vista.