Amy Irving’s home in a rebuilt barn is a slice of Santa Fe in New York

In 2009, Amy Irving’s house, a converted barn in New York’s Westchester County, burned to the ground. The cause was never determined.

“The insurance company sure wishes someone could figure out what happened,” said Irving, 71, an actor who is best known for her roles in “Carrie” (1976), “Yentl” (1983) and “Crossing Delancey “ (1988). “But there was too much damage.”

Irving, who recently released her second album, “Always Will Be,” a collection of Willie Nelson covers, handled the loss of her home with remarkable equipoise. (She and Nelson have been close since they starred in the 1980 drama “Honeysuckle Rose.”)

“I was in Paris with my mother, whose husband had just died, when Ken called to tell me about the fire,” Irving said, referring to her husband, Ken Bowser, a writer and filmmaker.

Some months afterward, having coped with the loss of her home, Irving began a conversation with the man seated next to her at a dinner. The subject of the fire came up, as did her intention to rebuild the house on the same site and her desire to rebuild it as a barn.

Her dinner partner mentioned a company that could help: Heritage Barns, a business that dismantles old barns, restores the wood and “then they bring it all to your plot of land and raise it just like in ‘Witness,’” said Irving, referring to the 1985 Harrison Ford thriller. “Then you get the contractors in to make a house.”

The house that those contractors made from two conjoined barns seems rather like an inside-out building. Its structure — joists, purlins, beams, trusses, rafters, siding in varying wood tones, orange-tinged to dark brown — is fully visible for admiring inspection.

The soaring, light-filled open space, yellow-painted walls, stone fireplace, woven fabrics draped here and there and the blue-patterned wing chairs, call to mind the landscape of the American Southwest, to be specific, Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Irving lived for many years. “Ken has great spatial talent so I considered him more the architect for the house,” she said. “I had the design talent so I filled it up.”

It says something about how large the house is and how tall the house is that the couple’s first acquisition was an indoor swing. “I just knew we had to have that. It was very important,” Irving said. “When kids come over here, they just love it.”

Her two dogs, Jules and Charlie, are probably a bit less enthused. “They get their heads bonked,” she said, “because they don’t know to get out of the way.”

The fire meant that Irving and Bowser had to furnish the new house from scratch. Woodbury, Connecticut, a town rich in antique shops, became a frequent destination. Monique Shay Antiques, now shuttered, was a particular favorite. There Irving bought a coffee table, a side table and plant tables, among other pieces. “I was picking out all these things and Monique said ‘come with me,’ and she showed me her kitchen,” Irving recalled. “I said ‘this is the best kitchen ever,’ and she told me ‘I do kitchens, too.’” An actor, Irving knew a cue when she heard it. But if Shay designed it, Irving made it specifically her own.

On display atop the blue-painted wood cabinets are vintage cans, among them Del Monte. “I’ve collected tins all through my life from everywhere I’ve been because they’re lightweight and not expensive,” Irving said. “Most of them went in the fire. A few of them survived.”

When Irving and her husband went to their property to survey the damage, they had been warned by firefighters to keep a safe distance because “things could still collapse,” Irving said. Nonetheless, amid the towering hills of rubble, Bowser spotted a ceramic vase and a handmade silver “Alice in Wonderland” clock.

“Ken is so tall that he was able to reach up and get them,” Irving said. “These things really mean something when they’re what survives.

The first house Irving was able to afford was in Santa Fe. The first piece of furniture she bought for that special place was a carousel horse. “It was the centerpiece of the house and I took it to every successive house and I lost it in the fire,” she said.

Some months later, she and her husband walked into a local furniture and design store, and “the first thing I saw was this,” Irving said, pointing to a carousel horse by the floating stairway. “I burst into tears. It was the first time I cried about the fire. My wedding dress had been lost. A lot of things had been lost. But this was the first time it hit me.” Bowser immediately bought the horse for her.

It is very lucky that Bowser likes to hear his wife sing.

Irving sings daily and loudly “so the lyrics stay deep inside me,” she said.

If she needs inspiration — it doesn’t really seem that she does — right near the piano is the guitar that Nelson gave her during the “Honeysuckle Rose” shoot. Nelson’s whole band signed it. So did his road manager. So did the cook. So, of course, did Nelson.

A Stickley dining table anchors the glass-enclosed room that Irving and her husband call the conservatory. It’s where they generally have breakfast. It’s where their plants thrive. It’s also where visitors can see a grouping of ceramic rabbits, apparently on a picnic.

That they were made by a Santa Fe artisan, Ward B. Kerr, was all to the good. Irving’s motivation to lay down her credit card for the sculptures was pretty simple: “They’re adorable,” she said. “I love them.”

On display in a cozy alcove near the stairs are family pictures of a very theatrical sort. As children Irving and her two siblings, Katie and David, were often part of productions that featured their mother, Priscilla Pointer, now 100, and were directed by their father, Jules Irving.

“Whatever the play was we’d get in costume and that would be the photo on our Christmas card,” said Irving. Thus, the holiday greetings from the gang as they appeared in “The Three Sisters” and “Waiting for Godot.”

Close by is a sculpture that was made by Irving’s maternal grandmother Augusta Pointer. “She made it when she was 23 years, and she won a contest,” Irving said. “It’s the one thing my brother and sister and I all want. My mother is letting me keep it for now, but there will be a big fight about it when she dies, which we hope will be years and years down the road.”

No need to fear a skirmish. She knows, especially after the fire, what she values: family, not stuff.

“It really put things in perspective,” she said.

“Compared to my mother losing her husband,” she continued. “Nobody had been inside the house at the time. Nobody was hurt. My two sons were devastated for me, and I said, ‘Now, I don’t have to do a spring cleaning.’ I had a good attitude.”

So it would seem. The family Christmas card that year showed a mountain of detritus and the message “Keep the home fires burning.”