Two years after her talk show ended, Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi moved to the U.K. for a much-needed change of scene.
Here’s how the longtime couple are settling into their new home.
Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi sightings are already a regular occurrence in the village they now call home.
Last year, the couple traded in their Montecito, Calif., estate for country living in the Cotswolds, a picturesque region of southwestern England known for its rolling hills and Masterpiece-ready charm.
And that’s where they marked 20 years together on Dec. 1, Ellen writing to Portia on Instagram, “You are a beautiful soul that I am so very grateful to have as a partner to navigate this crazy life with.”
In a nod to their new environs, the Emmy winner added, “So happy we get to travel and explore the world together in the next 20 years, and looking forward to our first snowy Christmas.”
Ellen, who’s turning 67 on Jan. 26, shot her eponymous talk show in the Los Angeles area for 19 years. So while she and Portia, 51, may have been plotting their big move for awhile, news that they’d changed not just zip codes but country codes in the fall of 2024 came as a bit of a shock.
Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi’s Cutest Photos
Of course, Ellen did say she was going to be “done” after shooting her stand-up special Ellen DeGeneres: For Your Approval in August at Minneapolis’ Orpheum Theater.
“I used to say that I didn’t care what other people thought of me,” she told a West Hollywood audience during her “Ellen’s Last Stand…Up Tour” in April. “And I realized…I said that at the height of my popularity.”
WILSON WEBB/NETFLIX
While her stand-up topics ranged from raising chickens to her osteoporosis diagnosis (“I’m like a human sandcastle,” she quipped in the special. “I could disintegrate in the shower”), Ellen acknowledged that the final season of her groundbreaking daytime show was plagued by allegations that staffers were mistreated—not by her, per se, but on her watch—and that she herself wasn’t the warm, congenial person she seemed to be on TV.
“The ‘be kind’ girl wasn’t kind,” she said onstage, reflecting on the headlines. “I became this one-dimensional character who gave stuff away and danced up steps. Do you know how hard it is to dance up steps? Would a mean person dance up steps? Had I ended my show by saying, ‘Go f–k yourself,’ people would’ve been pleasantly surprised.”
But while Ellen did advise her Santa Rosa, Calif., crowd in July that “this is the last time you’re going to see me,” she didn’t let on during the tour that she planned on leaving the country.
ADAM ROSE/NETFLIX
Instead, she and Portia quietly listed their Montecito home and settled into their new farmhouse in the Cotswolds—which, according to Ellen, did not flood during torrential rains in November despite reports to the contrary—before word got out.
Multiple outlets also reported that President Donald Trump‘s then-imminent return to the White House was the deciding factor, but the couple haven’t commented on what, exactly, inspired their big move.
However, their lies to Hollywood had been loosening for awhile. Ellen cracked in her special that she was “kicked out of show business.” And Portia, known for a string of memorable TV roles, had already decided to put acting in her rearview mirror when she agreed to reprise the role of Lindsay Bluth for Arrested Development’s fifth season in 2018.
“Don’t know how it happened,” the Australian star said on Ellen in 2018, “but yes I am on season five.”
Eric Charbonneau/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures
Portia, who’s also an avid equestrienne and animal rescue activist, had already co-founded an art curation and reproduction company called General Public after being written off of Scandal the year beforehand.
“I just kind of was wondering, is there something that I could tackle now that I’ve never done before that would be really challenging and different?” Portia explained to the woman she wed in 2008. “I kind of knew what acting would look like for me for the next 10, 20 years, so I decided to quit and start a business.”
And it appears to be the kind she can do from anywhere with an internet connection.
Santi Visalli/Getty Images
So when Ellen and Portia popped into The Farmer’s Dog pub in the Oxfordshire town of Burford a few weeks after the Nov. 5 presidential election to catch an acoustic set by The Corrs—as did Natalie Imbruglia, who posted video from that night, and James Blunt—they were settling into their new surroundings, as opposed to playing tourists.
“She lives in the village where our pub is,” former Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson, who owns the pub, told the The Mirror of Ellen earlier this month. “Absolutely I welcome them all. Everyone said she has been canceled but she seemed nice when she came to the pub, the staff said she was very friendly and lovely.”
Ellen and Portia were also spotted walking around their village last month, already looking like locals in their coats and wellies.
Instagram
As for more proof that Ellen is getting comfortable in the latest chapter of her life: The historically blonde star let her hair go gray, as seen in photographs taken of her in Montecito on Jan. 14.
Prolific house-flippers who were always buying or selling one high-end property or another for the past two decades, Ellen and Portia cycled through numerous addresses in the moneyed Santa Barbara County town about 90 miles north of L.A.
“I don’t really travel a lot. So, house flipping is my version of travel,” Ellen told Montecito Journal architecture magazine The Riv in 2023. “With house flipping, the scenery changes though I stay in the same general area. Only in a new place and from a new perspective.”
Surely some rustic manors and stone cottages are prime for the flipping in the Cotswolds—where fellow famous homeowners include Kate Moss, Hugh Grant and Jamie Dornan—so that could be another way for the couple to pass the time in England.
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