- Member of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Art Directors Branch) [2002-2005]
- One of the reasons I like to make everything is that I can dictate the style for each character. Then when you have these guys on screen, they do not look too far from each other but do not blend in together either. In the marketplace, shops, you're generally kind of stuck. You have gray suits, blue suits, black suits. You've got a peak lapel, a notch lapel, you might have a shawl lapel, but that's it. There isn't much choice.
- I have worked with a lot of terrific filmmakers, directors, from Milos Forman to Michael Mann to Steven Soderbergh. I've been very lucky. I wanted to work with Christopher Nolan because I admired his movies, Memento (2000) especially, which is something I have watched over and over again. I just saw him as so fresh and new.
- [on Tenet (2020)] I started before the whole thing was cast, and at one point Christopher Nolan said, Elizabeth Debicki's playing this role and, you know, she's six foot three in her stocking feet. My suggestion was to take advantage of that. Let's own that, because she's never gonna be shorter than anybody on screen. So let's bump it up and give her what she comes with. She's so stately and she makes a statement physically, and visually, on her own. And as a designer, she's a dream to work with.
- [on working with Christopher Nolan] The chat is about the script itself and the story, then we talk about the characters. Who they are mentally, physically, how he physically wants to present them. There's a long chat about everybody. Then I go off and I start to draw. I sketch this thing and I show them to Chris and he says to me, Oh, you're on the right track, or No, no, no, you're veering off, that's not where I want to go.That's the kind of dialogue we have for a long time until we settle in on the direction for each character. Then I start choosing fabrics and I bring them over to Chris and it's always a shared decision. He's in on all the elements.
- I don't like to repeat anything. Every film is so original unto itself, it deserves its own look. Over my career, I've tried to - and hopefully successfully - reinvent the suit for each character. Tom Cruise's character in Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018) is not the same as Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception (2010) and it's not the same as John David Washington in Tenet (2020). Everybody's wearing suits, but I hope they don't look the same because they're all character driven. And that's the thing that I enjoy, and that I like to do.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content