Actress Sela Ward lists her custom compound in Bel-Air in preparation for a N.Y. move

Actress Sela Ward and her husband, Howard Sherman, have put their Bel-Air estate on the market at $39.995 million because they are planning to move to New York.

The couple rebuilt and reimagined the mansion into a French country home during their 12 years of ownership, handpicking items from the Paris Flea Market and New Orleans boutiques and using wood from vintage structures in Mississippi and Louisiana. Ward hails from the South.

The sprawling 8-acre sanctuary has 14,000 square feet of living space in a main house and two guesthouses, a stream with a footbridge, a vineyard, a 100-seat outdoor amphitheater and a swimming pool.

The reconstructed house takes its design cues from the contour of the property while blending European elegance with American sensibilities. Such features include a home theater that seats 30, a stone-walled kitchen, a dedicated massage room, a pub, 13 bathrooms, 10 carved wood or stone fireplaces and vaulted antique wood-beam ceilings.

The estate includes five bedrooms in the main house, one in what has been used as an art studio and another in a guest cottage that has a screened porch and a rose garden.

Stone terraces and verandas lead to acres of walking paths and four-wheeler trails. A series of waterfalls feed into koi ponds. The man-made swimming pond is bordered by a tiki torch-lit beach, a stone cabana, a putting green for the adults and a miniature golf course.

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Ward, 59, has had a varied film and television career. In recent years, she has been in the series “CSI: N.Y.” and “House M.D.” She starred in the 1990s dramatic series “Sisters” and the family/romance series “Once and Again.” She will be in next year’s sci-fi film “Independence Day: Resurgence” and last year was in “Gone Girl.”

Branden Williams and Rayni Romito of Williams & Williams at Hilton & Hyland, an affiliate of Christie’s International Real Estate, and Jade Mills of Coldwell Banker are the listing agents.

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