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Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi Make a Great Move From California to Cotswolds
With a drastic lifestyle change in 2024, Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi have become new faces of the English village they have moved in.
The two lovebirds sold their Montecito, California mansion and went country to the Cotswolds, an enchanting area in the southwestern part of England that is famous for stunning looks of hills and an adorable village charm.
Ellen, who will be 68 on January 26, brought her talk show to the Los Angeles area for almost two decades. It might have been that the couple was thinking about the move for a while but the news that they had moved to England in the fall of 2024 caught the public by surprise.
Dec. 1, 2024 was 20 years of their union, Ellen decided to give Portia, 52, a romantic shout-out on Instagram. “You have a lovely soul, and I am very grateful that I have you as a partner to share this crazy life with,” she posted. “I am glad that we can travel and explore the world for the next 20 years, and I am also very excited about our first Christmas with snow.”
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Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi Reportedly Deepen Their U.K. Life After Selling a Cotswolds Farmhouse
Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi seem to be fully embracing their new life in England — but that doesn’t mean they aren’t showing off their property flair either.
Having transformed a Cotswolds farmhouse, the couple allegedly put the property on the market for a whopping $30 million last July, demonstrating that the luxury real estate sector is still very much alive and kicking. They moved into a more contemporary property called Kitesbridge Farm in Oxfordshire after that, as per Hello!.
Hence, although the two have been seen now and then in their old spots in Southern California, there is a strong feeling that they—the couple who celebrated their 17th wedding anniversary this August—are going to stay in the U.K. for quite a while.
This move also comes as Ellen expressed a desire to lessen her exposure to the public. Following the taping of her stand-up special for the month of August 2024 entitled Ellen DeGeneres: For Your Approval at the Orpheum Theater in Minneapolis, she made a really strong statement that she was “done.” And during the “Ellen’s Last Stand…Up Tour” in April, she talked about how fame affected her on a psychological level: “I used to tell everyone that it didn’t matter to me what people thought about me,” she said to a crowd in West Hollywood. “And then I figured it out… I was saying that when I was super famous.”
Ellen DeGeneres Talks About Workplace Allegations In Her Stand-Up Special Before Going To The U.K.
Ellen DeGeneres took a few swipes at different sensitive topics in her stand-up special, one of which was her osteoporosis diagnosis (“I am like a human sandcastle,” she quipped. “I could just crumble in the shower”) and chickens she lives with.
Most importantly, she talked about the last season of her daytime talk show that was overshadowed by the allegations of staffers being mistreated, not necessarily being by her directly but surely under her watch, and the uncertainty about whether her on-air persona was her real personality.
Looking at the headlines, Ellen said on stage, “The ‘be kind’ girl wasn’t kind,” she reflected 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? If I had finished my show by saying ‘Go f–k yourself,’ people would have been very surprised.”
In her stop on the Ellen DeGeneres tour at Santa Rosa, California in July 2024, Ellen told the crowd, “This is the last time you see me,” but she did not announce her plans to move to England during the tour.
Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi Quietly Settled Into Cotswolds Life, Local Pub Owner Says She’s “Very Friendly”
Before the relocation to the UK became widely known, Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi quietly made their move to England, put their Montecito home on the market, and settled into a farmhouse in the Cotswolds, it was reported.
Ellen has also consistently denied the city rumor that the house was flooded during the heavy rain in November 2024, even though the media are reporting it.
More than a month after the Nov. 5 presidential election, the couple were at The Farmer’s Dog pub, Burford, Oxfordshire, to see an acoustic set by The Corrs. Natalie Imbruglia shared a video from the night, and James Blunt was also there—indicating that Ellen and Portia were integrating with the locals and not just sightseeing.
Jeremy Clarkson, ex-Top Gear presenter and pub owner, told The Mirror in an interview earlier this month that he was aware of the couple’s outings in the area. “She lives in the village where our pub is,” he said. “Of course, I welcome them all. Everyone has been saying she got canceled but she seemed nice when she came to the pub, the staff said she was very friendly and lovely.”
Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi Live as Locals in England
Last month, Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi were seen walking through their new village, totally living the local life in coats and wellies. Their relocation to England reflects a change in de Rossi’s priorities as she has stepped away from acting to seek out different challenges.
After her character in Scandal was killed off, de Rossi started General Public, an art curation and reproduction company. Besides that, she is still a passionate rider and animal rescue supporter.
To DeGeneres, de Rossi explained her decision to change careers, “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?” “I had a sense of what acting would be for me for the next 10, 20 years, so I made up my mind to quit and start a company.”
It looks like she can run her business pretty much from anywhere, which is great for them as a couple since now they can enjoy their life in a new country without losing touch with their professional interests.
Ellen DeGeneres Praises “Simpler Way of Life” in England After Moving With Portia de Rossi
Ellen DeGeneres has revealed she is loving their new rural lifestyle since she and wife Portia de Rossi moved to England.
“It is stunning, of course,” Ellen told Richard Bacon at Cheltenham’s Everyman Theatre in July 2025 about the Cotswolds, per the BBC. “We simply aren’t used to such wonderful scenes. The villages, the towns and the architectures—everything that you lay your eyes on is beautiful and it is just a simpler way of life.”
She also compared the differences she sees to the U.S. “It’s spotless,” she went on. “Everything is just top-notch here—the way animals are treated, people are polite. What more can one ask? I’m just crazy about it here.”
She added that they had relocated last November—”definitely not the best time”—but it was the first time she had seen snow. She also said that Portia had brought the horses over from America to England while she had been raising chickens and they even briefly had sheep.
“We’re so happy here,” she stated.
Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi Keep House-Flipping Hobby Going in English Cotswolds
Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi have been well-known as property investors for a long time. They have been purchasing and selling luxury homes in different parts of Santa Barbara County for the past twenty years.
“Since I don’t really travel a lot, house flipping is kind of like my way of traveling,” said Ellen in an interview with The Riv, Montecito Journal’s architecture magazine, in 2023. “The great thing about house flipping is that the surroundings change even if you stay in the same general area. It’s just like being in a new place and seeing it from a different angle.”
It seems the pair have had no shortage of chances there to carry on with their pastime in the Cotswolds, a place where old farmhouses and little stone cottages provide new projects. The area is also the residence of other famous celebrities such as Kate Moss, Hugh Grant, and Jamie Dornan.
