Profile:Jenny Beavan/Costume Designer/Oscar/2 Win/10 Nom/Mad Max:Fury Road

Designer Jenny Beavan earned a reputation for detailed and historically accurate work with a host of Oscar nominations, many for her frequent collaborations on Merchant Ivory costume dramas. In this capacity, Beavan had as important a role as the actors, given the task of creating styles that were at once pleasing to the eye and appropriate for and evocative of the characters she was outfitting. After impressive work designing for theater and the opera, with credits including 1973's "Carmen" starring Placido Domingo, Beavan made her debut creating clothing for Peggy Ashcroft for a 1979 Merchant Ivory TV-movie "The Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie's Pictures" and segued to the big screen assisting costumer Judy Moorcroft on the filmmakers' "The Europeans". In 1984 Beavan began her partnership with costume designer James Bright, an alliance that would lead to six Oscar nominations including one for their debut, the Merchant Ivory filming of Henry James' suffragist drama "The Bostonians". Two years later the designers would win an Academy Award for their follow-up, another Merchant Ivory film based on a literary work, E.M. Forster's "A Room With a View". Here Beavan added to the beautiful Florence-set production with genuine Victorian costumes, more constricting to illustrate uptight Charlotte Bartlett (Maggie Smith) and a looser silhouette for freer spirit George Emerson (Julian Sands).She won her second  Academy Award for for Mad Max: Fury Road. Beavan also received a Tony Award nomination for Best Costume Design for the play Private Lives. You can email your questions to 123filmeasy@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter @123Film