Evictions of the Rich and Famous

Eviction makes headlines and is featured in movies but the legal machinery that decides who stays housed rarely gets a close-up.

By Stephanie S. Germani, Esq.

Eviction has become strangely familiar cultural terrain, yet the law that drives it remains largely invisible. Actor Mickey Rourke’s current unlawful detainer lawsuit in Los Angeles shows that the same Judicial Council forms used against low-income tenants can just as easily bear the name of an Oscar-nominated defendant. At the same time, films and documentaries about eviction focus on working-class hardship, homelessness, and moral crisis, leaving the actual mechanics of possession, process, and representation off-screen.

Celebrities on the unlawful detainer docket

Actor Mickey Rourke is not the person most Californians picture when they think of a tenant sued for unlawful detainer. A recently filed UD-100 complaint in Los Angeles Superior Court alleges that Rourke leased a 1926 single-family bungalow on Drexel Avenue under a fixed-term lease for $7,000 per month and that, by mid-December 2025, he owed $59,100 in unpaid rent. The landlord’s counsel served a three-day notice to pay rent or quit by posting and mailing on December 18, 2025, and then filed an unlimited civil unlawful detainer action seeking possession, forfeiture of the lease, past-due rent, holdover damages, and attorney’s fees.

Read as a practitioner, the complaint is unremarkable. It is on the standard Judicial Council UD-100 form, alleges at-fault just cause under the Tenant Protection Act of 2019, and attaches a three-day notice that lists the rent periods, the total amount demanded, and an election of forfeiture if the tenant does not cure within the statutory time. Apart from the name of the defendant, this is the same nonpayment case that walks into California courts every day.

Celebrity chef Madison Cowan, a winner of “Chopped” and “Iron Chef America,” moved into a Brooklyn apartment in October 2019 at $2,750 per month but allegedly stopped paying rent in January 2020. His landlord says Cowan then relied on a pandemic-era eviction moratorium and a series of appeals to avoid multiple scheduled evictions, accumulating more than $145,000 in rent debt before choosing not to appeal a sixth eviction order. Cowan told the court he “couldn’t get a job” during COVID-19 and that both the pandemic and the publicity had destroyed his income, while the landlord described significant financial strain and low expectations of recovering the rent Cowan owed.

When eviction reaches the tabloids

Earlier celebrity eviction stories underscore how money, leverage, and public image affect outcomes without changing the underlying legal framework. Hip-hop artist Tyga faced eviction and property damage allegations from a Hollywood Hills home after amassing back rent on a $17,000-per-month tenancy. Real Housewives personality Kim Zolciak and NFL player Kroy Biermann confronted liens and reported eviction issues over a Georgia mansion. Amanda Bynes vacated a New York City apartment after neighbor complaints rather than facing eviction. Courtney Love defended against a Manhattan townhome case involving allegations of nonpayment, damage from a small fire, and unauthorized alterations, ultimately winning on summary judgment. Even Jay-Z and Beyoncé reportedly faced eviction from a high-end Holmby Hills rental but not because of rent default, but because the homeowner sold the property and pursued removal of the occupants after the sale.

These cases make for entertaining headlines, but they are doctrinally ordinary. Rourke’s case turns on the fundamentals of nonpayment: Was rent agreed, was it unpaid, and was notice served? Cowan’s case illustrates how emergency-era protections, appellate rights, and a tenant’s willingness to litigate can dramatically extend the life of a tenancy — even when no rent is being paid. The other celebrity examples highlight different theories: nonpayment, nuisance or lease violations, property damage, and post-sale possession. For real property practitioners, the lesson is that unlawful detainer is not a niche poverty-law device; it is the enforcement mechanism for possessory rights at every price point.

From the courtroom to the screen

From this reality, it is a short step to the screen. Popular films have used eviction to dramatize economic anxiety and personal resilience, while mostly leaving the law itself in the background. “The Pursuit of Happyness” (2006) follows Chris Gardner and his young son as they are evicted from their San Francisco apartment and cycle through shelters and public spaces, presenting eviction as the point at which a fragile existence tips into homelessness. “99 Homes” (2014) sets its story in post-crash Florida, where a construction worker played by Andrew Garfield is evicted from his family home by a real-estate broker, then goes to work helping that same broker clear other families out during the foreclosure crisis, capturing the impersonal, assembly-line feel of mass dispossession. It is one of the few dramas to show eviction as a system rather than a one-off tragedy. “Time Out of Mind” (2014) abandons the courtroom entirely, following a man played by Richard Gere as he navigates shelters, hospitals, and the streets after losing his housing.

More recent work connects directly to contemporary eviction practice. “Night Always Comes” is a 2025 drama adapted from Willy Vlautin’s novel, in which Lynette (Vanessa Kirby) has one night to pull together enough money in Portland to prevent her family’s eviction in a rapidly gentrifying city. The film, released on Netflix, condenses what lawyers see as weeks of notices, cure periods, and filings into a tense, single-night odyssey built around the fear of losing a home.

Documentaries come closest to showing what happens when the law, not just the drama, is the subject. “Facing Eviction,” a Frontline and Retro Report collaboration that premiered on PBS in 2022, follows tenants, landlords, lawyers, judges, and law-enforcement officers through the pandemic-era eviction process, examining how the federal moratorium and rent-relief programs actually played out in local courts. “Evicting the American Dream,” premiered in 2025 at community screenings and church-based events, explores systemic practices that push families out of their homes and into unstable or substandard housing, weaving together expert interviews and the voices of tenants and children directly affected.

What the films don’t show

Even these films and documentaries, powerful as they are, give relatively little space to the granular issues that consume unlawful detainer practice. They may show a deputy at the door or a judge on the bench, but not the questions about statutory notices, state and local just-cause rules, nonpayment versus no-fault grounds, or the sometimes decisive details of service and evidence. That disconnect matters because the audience watches a human crisis but practitioners know that service, notice, and timing frequently dictate who wins or loses before a judge hears testimony.

Representation and funding sit in the middle of this gap. Studies of eviction practice across jurisdictions consistently find that most landlords appear with counsel, while most tenants do not. A recent Los Angeles right-to-counsel report estimated that there were only a limited number of attorneys effectively handling the bulk of eviction-defense work in the county and that scaling up to meaningful coverage would require several times that number of dedicated housing lawyers. In November 2025, the State Bar of California’s Office of Access & Inclusion issued an impact brief, “At a Precipice: How Funding Cuts Threaten Justice for Millions in California,” warning that approximately $187 million in federal civil legal aid funding for California was at risk, including $55.7 million annually from the Legal Services Corporation and additional dollars that support housing-stability programs. That brief urged policymakers to increase state Equal Access Fund appropriations and restore flexibility in grant programs but noted that, without renewed investment, legal aid organizations would be forced to scale back housing and eviction-prevention work.

Why this matters to landlord-side counsel

“Evictions of the Rich and Famous” is more than a catchy headline. The Rourke and Cowan cases are opportunities to explain to colleagues and the public that unlawful detainer is core real-property enforcement doctrine, not an afterthought. They also invite a broader question: if eviction has become a staple of modern storytelling, why is the legal profession still so reluctant to talk about the law of eviction itself in CLEs, in law-review pages, and in the business plans of private firms?

Answering that question will require not just watching the movies, but being willing to step into the scenes they rarely show: the hallway outside Department 201, the 9:00 a.m. UD calendar, and the quiet negotiations where homes, careers, and investments are actually saved or lost.

Stephanie S. Germani, Esq. practices housing law in Southern California. She knows most eviction cases do not end with Joe Pesci’s slumlord-to-softie transformation like in the 1991 comedy “The Super,” but believes the bar can still write better endings.