My latest brush with greatness thanks to the ICG Magazine: interviewing Oscar®-nominated production designer Eve Stewart, who's racking up nominations and statuettes for her most recent project, The King's Speech.
Sitting down with British production designer Eve Stewart is more like taking tea with an old friend than conducting a formal interview. Armed with an affable personality and a natural propensity for storytelling, it’s easy to see why directors like Mike Leigh and Tom Hooper keep hiring her. Stewart recently earned her second Oscar nomination and third BAFTA nomination for her work on Hooper’s The King’s Speech. Past credits include Guy Ritchie’s Revolver (2005), her BAFTA-nominated production design for Vera Drake (2004) and Topsy-Turvy (1999), for which Stewart shared an Oscar nomination for Best Art Direction/Set Decoration with John Bush). The art school graduate says she’s influenced by theatrical designers and is a big fan of “outsider art.” “I met a woman who was very sick and had been most of her life,” Stewart recalled. “She sat in bed and embroidered, within arm’s reach, with everything she knew and dreamed about. It was like someone’s soul in a crescent shape. Dreams in little stitches.” Within the film industry, Stewart admires Dante Ferretti and John Box, adding that in her own designs, she can get caught up in telling the truth sometimes, when what she needs to do is “just let the poetry of the thing take me on a great surge of joy.” Margot Carmichael Lester chatted with the two-time Oscar nominee about her prime creative relationships on the set – cinematographers and directors – and how she was able to surf that self-described “surge of creative joy” in her designs for The King’s Speech, set in 1930s London. Read more