Search for celebrities in Costa Rica and you will find the same list everywhere: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Mark Zuckerberg, Tom Cruise, Lady Gaga. Beachfront estates, private islands, secret jungle compounds.
Almost none of it holds up.
Those lists are largely copied between real-estate blogs, each citing the last. Several of the original sources actually label their own entries “rumoured” or “suspected” — and the sites that copy them quietly drop the caveat. So this article does two things: it gives you the people whose connection to Costa Rica is genuinely documented, and it tells you plainly which famous names are myths.
Well documented
Mel Gibson
The strongest case on any such list. Gibson owns Hacienda Barrigona, an estate of roughly 400 acres with three villas and private beach access at Playa Barrigona on the Nicoya Peninsula, near Sámara in Guanacaste.
He bought it around 2007, having found the site while scouting locations for Apocalypto. It has been listed for sale on and off — at $29.75 million in 2017 and again since — but no sale has been reported, and as of January 2025 he still owned it.
He confirmed it himself on the Joe Rogan podcast in January 2025: “I have a place in Costa Rica, and I love it. I bought it many years ago, and it is in a good location, not in a very touristy area.”
The property has also been the subject of a reported dispute over public beach access and the maritime zone — a genuinely Costa Rican problem that no amount of celebrity resolves.
Gisele Bündchen
The supermodel owns a home in Santa Teresa, on the Nicoya Peninsula, and has described Costa Rica as a “home away from home.”
She acquired it around 2021–22 and retained it in her 2022 divorce settlement, and she has continued visiting regularly through 2025. She has spoken about it directly in interviews with Vanity Fair and CBS.
You will see a “$20 million mansion” figure attached to it. That comes from celebrity real-estate reporting rather than any land registry record, so treat it as a claim rather than a fact.
Tom Brady — but a weaker claim than you would think
Brady and Bündchen held a second, private wedding ceremony in Costa Rica in April 2009, on the Nicoya Peninsula. That is thoroughly documented, though for an unhappy reason: their bodyguards fired on paparazzi at the event and were later convicted and sentenced, a case covered by CBS, AP and others.
Property ownership in Brady’s own name is not established. The Santa Teresa house is reported as hers.
Robert August
The surfer who starred in The Endless Summer (1966) and The Endless Summer II (1994) is the closest thing on this list to a genuine long-term resident rather than a holidaymaker.
He built a house in Tamarindo, Guanacaste around the time of Endless Summer II filming in the early 1990s, ran a board-shaping operation there, and became part of the local surf community. The Los Angeles Times profiled him in 2019 as a full-time Tamarindo resident.
One honest caveat: sources conflict on where he lives now, with some reporting he has since returned to Southern California. Treat him as a long-term resident of Tamarindo historically, not necessarily today.
Michael Jordan
A repeat visitor rather than a resident — and the reason is fishing. Jordan comes for offshore sport fishing aboard his boat Catch 23, competing in the Pelagic Rockstar Offshore Tournament out of Los Sueños Marina in Herradura, near Jacó, and Marina Pez Vela in Quepos.
His January 2026 visit was covered by La Nación, CRHoy and others, and he returned within the same month.
He does not, despite what you will read, own a vacation home in Papagayo. Nothing credible supports that.
Jack Dorsey
The Twitter and Block co-founder is a frequent visitor to Santa Teresa and Malpaís. Costa Rican outlet Observador, citing immigration records, reported nine entries since 2019.
Property ownership is not documented. The often-repeated claim that he announced he would move to Costa Rica for six months traces back to his plan to spend time in Africa, not here.
Will Smith and the After Earth production
Will and Jaden Smith, along with cast and crew, spent weeks in Costa Rica in 2012 filming M. Night Shyamalan’s After Earth, shooting in the Arenal and Sarapiquí rainforest among other locations. A genuine filming stay — not residency, but a real and documented presence.
The names that are almost certainly myths
Here is where the standard listicle falls apart. For each of the following, we found no credible source connecting them to Costa Rican property or residence:
- Leonardo DiCaprio — a visitor and environmental supporter at most. His documented property portfolio contains nothing in Costa Rica.
- Mark Zuckerberg — the “beachfront estate near Santa Teresa” has no credible source, and is flagged as unconfirmed even by the blog that spreads it.
- Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie — a 2011 “house-hunting” and “private island” rumour. Nothing more.
- Britney Spears — “a villa next to Mel Gibson’s.” The only underlying fact is a reported visit in 2008.
- Tom Cruise — rated as rumour even by the sites repeating it.
- Charlie Sheen — a rumour attached to a 2007 engagement and 2008 honeymoon.
- Lady Gaga — no basis at all.
- Steven Seagal — he did pitch Costa Rica as “Hollywood South” and scouted Guanacaste, but no purchase was ever confirmed.
- Woody Harrelson, Bill Gates, Jim Carrey, Mick Jagger, Rob Lowe, Christian Bale, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, Ricky Martin, Shakira, Sylvester Stallone, Tiger Woods, Kate Bosworth — nothing credible for any of them. Harrelson’s off-grid property is on Maui. Gates’s, Woods’s and Stallone’s documented portfolios contain no Costa Rican holding.
Two corrections worth making
Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf are frequently listed as Costa Rica property owners or developers. They were neither. Their names were licensed for a branded tennis and fitness centre inside a resort project that was never built.
Anthony Bourdain never filmed a Costa Rica episode of Parts Unknown or No Reservations. He is invoked constantly in Costa Rican travel writing, and he never came for the show.
The project the celebrity names were attached to
Worth knowing, because it explains where several of these rumours came from. In August 2007, AOL co-founder Steve Case announced an $800 million resort at Punta Cacique in Guanacaste — 263 hectares, three five-star hotels, a golf course — launched at Casa Presidencial alongside President Óscar Arias.
It never materialised as announced. But the marketing around it attached a number of famous names to Costa Rican real estate, and some of those associations have outlived the project by nearly twenty years.
The Costa Ricans
A different category entirely, and arguably the more interesting one — these are nationals, not expatriates.
- Keylor Navas — goalkeeper, born in Pérez Zeledón in 1986. Three consecutive UEFA Champions League titles with Real Madrid between 2016 and 2018, and Costa Rica’s most-capped goalkeeper.
- Franklin Chang Díaz — born in San José in 1950. A NASA astronaut who flew a record-tying seven Space Shuttle missions between 1986 and 2002, and founder of Ad Astra Rocket Company, which operates a research facility in Liberia, Guanacaste.
- Claudia Poll — winner of Costa Rica’s only Olympic gold medal, in the 200m freestyle at Atlanta 1996, plus two bronzes at Sydney 2000. Born in Managua to a German family and raised in Costa Rica. Her sister Silvia Poll won the country’s first Olympic medal, a silver, at Seoul 1988.
- Nery Brenes — sprinter from Limón, world indoor 400m champion in 2012.
- Harry Shum Jr. — actor and dancer, known for Glee, Shadowhunters and Everything Everywhere All at Once. Born in Limón on 28 April 1982 to Chinese parents; the family moved to San Francisco when he was six. He has said: “It’s strange that I am full Chinese and born in a Latin country, but I love the fact that I was immersed in that culture at birth.”
Why the myths persist
Because they sell property. A rumour that a movie star bought nearby is free marketing for everything else on the same coastline, and there is no cost to publishing it.
The genuine story is smaller and more interesting: a director who bought 400 acres near Sámara and kept it for nearly twenty years, a supermodel who found somewhere quiet in Santa Teresa, a surfer who moved to Tamarindo in the nineties and stayed, and a basketball player who keeps coming back for the fishing.
That is a country people quietly choose, which is a better recommendation than a celebrity list anyway.
Thinking about your own move?
You do not need 400 acres to make Costa Rica home — but you do need the right residency status. CRIE — Costa Rica Immigration Experts handles residency applications, renewals and citizenship for people relocating here.
See the residency options in Costa Rica, or get in touch.
Every connection described above is sourced to mainstream reporting or the person’s own public statements. Where a claim is contested or thin, we have said so rather than repeat it.
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