‘Rosemary’s Baby,’ ‘Chinatown’ Costume Designer Was 84

Anthea Sylbert, the two-time Oscar-nominated costume designer who labored on Rosemary’s Child, Chinatown, Carnal Information, Shampoo and Julia earlier than turning into a studio govt and producer, has died. She was 84.

Sylbert died Tuesday in Skiathos, Greece, director Sakus Lalus instructed The Hollywood Reporter. Lalus simply completed a documentary about Sylbert titled, My Life in 3 Acts.

Sylbert partnered with two-time Oscar-winning manufacturing Richard Sylbert on eight movies and together with his twin brother, Paul Sylbert — her first husband and one other Oscar-winning manufacturing designer — on one other three.

“Paul is the extra bitter, extra indignant of the 2,” she instructed Peter Biskind in 1993. “Somebody as soon as put it this manner: Dick is extra of a diplomat. He’ll put the ice choose someplace in your again, you’re not fairly certain, and also you kind of really feel tickled; Paul, whereas going through you, sticks it in your intestine. I all the time used to assume that in case you put them collectively, they’d make the proper individual.”

Along with Carnal Information (1971), Sylbert did the costumes for director Mike Nichols on The Day of the Dolphin (1973) and The Fortune (1975) and for his Broadway performs The Prisoner of Second Avenue, the acclaimed Neil Simon comedy that bowed in 1971, and the Tom Stoppard-written The Actual Factor, for which she acquired a Tony nomination in 1984.

It was Nichols who launched her when she acquired a profession achievement award from the Costume Designers Guild in 2005.

Sylbert was the uncommon lady within the New Hollywood period to segue from the artistic facet of filmmaking to the enterprise facet, first as an govt at Warner Bros. and United Artists after which as Goldie Hawn’s founding accomplice in a manufacturing firm.

For the chilling Rosemary’s Child (1968), which after all starred Mia Farrow as a naïve pregnant lady who comes to comprehend her aged neighbors are members of a Satanic cult, director Roman Polanski instructed Sylbert to make the viewers assume “we’re doing a Doris Day film,” she mentioned within the 2006 e book Designing Motion pictures: Portrait of a Hollywood Artist.

“He needed the whole lot to look odd. Persons are put comfortable by odd, and in reality, are put comfortable by garish,” she mentioned. “He didn’t need something within the movie to appear sinister.”

She reteamed with Polanski for the Thirties Los Angeles-set Chinatown (1974) and acquired her first Oscar nomination, then landed her second for her work in Fred Zinnemann’s Julia (1977), which takes place in Europe throughout World Struggle II.

Sylbert dressed Jack Nicholson for Carnal Information, Chinatown, The Fortune and Elia Kazan’s The Final Tycoon (1976). “He truly gave me the very best praise I ever received as a fancy dress designer,” she recalled. “He mentioned, ‘When The Ant [his nickname for her] does your garments, you don’t should act as a lot.’”

Born in Brooklyn on Oct. 6, 1939, Anthea Giannakouros studied artwork historical past at Barnard School and vogue on the Parsons College of Design, labored as a researcher for a Broadway costume designer and did off-Broadway performs like P.S. 193 and The Chief Factor.

She married Paul Sylbert in 1965, and so they labored collectively on her first film, The Tiger Makes Out (1967), directed by Arthur Hiller and starring Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson and, in his first film, Dustin Hoffman. In Europe, brother-in-law Richard launched them to Polanski.

Sylbert designed costumes for Garson Kanin’s Some Form of a Nut (1969) and The place It’s At (1969) and Elaine Might’s A New Leaf (1971) and The Heartbreak Child (1972), then captured swinging Beverly Hills within the 12 months 1968 together with her garments for Shampoo (1975), one slinky, sequined black costume worn by Julie Christie specifically.

“When she got here to the becoming for that costume, she didn’t prefer it,” Sylbert mentioned. “She thought that perhaps it must be reduce low within the entrance. And the director [Hal Ashby] got here to the becoming room and mentioned, ‘Can’t you simply reduce it a bit bit?’

“And I mentioned, ‘No, not this costume. I’ll design a complete different costume. However this costume is that this costume. The joke is, she’s as much as right here [to her neck in the front], after which she turns round and also you see the crack in her ass.’”

Sylbert additionally labored on The Illustrated Man (1969), Peter Yates’ John and Mary (1969) — with Farrow once more — Stuart Rosenberg’s Transfer (1970), Mark Rydell’s The Cowboys (1972), Robert Benton’s Unhealthy Firm (1972) and John Guillermin’s King Kong (1976) earlier than disagreements over the costumes in Norman Jewison’s F.I.S.T. (1978) received her desirous about a profession change.

She was employed as vp manufacturing at Warner Bros. underneath John Calley, then moved to United Artists, the place she had the identical title and labored alongside Paula Weinstein, then president of movement image manufacturing at that studio.

For a couple of decade, Sylbert and Hawn — they first labored collectively on Shampoo — led a Disney-based manufacturing firm, and he or she produced such movies because the Hawn-starring Protocol (1984), Wildcats (1986), Overboard (1987) and CrissCross (1992), plus My Blue Heaven (1990) and One thing to Discuss About (1995).

She and Weinstein shared an Emmy for excellent made for tv film for producing 1995’s Truman, starring Gary Sinise because the thirty third U.S. president.

She divorced Paul Sylbert (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kramer vs. Kramer, Heaven Can Wait) in 1984, and he or she married Imply Streets actor Richard Romanus — he was in Protocol — the next 12 months. They went on to put in writing and produce the Lifetime telefilms Giving Up the Ghost and If You Consider in 1998 and ’99.

The couple moved to the Greek city of Skiathos in 2000 and had been declared honorary residents in 2021 earlier than Romanus died in December.

Survivors embrace her son, Robert Romanus.