Janet Patterson Dies: Costume Designer & Jane Campion Regular Was Four-Time Oscar Nominee
Janet Patterson, a costume designer who worked on several Jane Campion films and amassed four Oscar nominations over a 30-year career, has died. Rocco Hindman, head of the agency that repped Patterson, told the Associated Press that she died recently in Australia but did not provide details, including her age.
She launched her career with the 1984 Australian TV series Sweet and Sour and the 1986 miniseries Palace of Dreams, then turned her focus exclusively to features. Patterson’s first collaboration with Campion was the director’s 1986 film 2 Friends. She scored her first Academy Award nom for Campion’s 1850s-set The Piano (1993), a Best Picture nominee that earned statuettes for stars Anna Paquin and Holly Hunter. (That’s Patterson flanked by Jan Chapman and Campion in the photo above.) She would win a BAFTA Award for that one. Three years later she was back in the Oscar race with The Portrait of a Lady, another 19th century tale directed by Campion.
The following year, Patterson scored a second consecutive Oscar nomination for Oscar and Lucinda, yet another story set in mid-1800s England. Ralph Fiennes, Cate Blanchett and Ciaran Hands starred in that 1997 pic directed by Gillian Armstrong.
Patterson went on to do the costumes for Holy Smoke (1999) and Peter Pan (2003) before returning to the Oscar race with Bright Star (2009), again for writer-director Campion and again set in the 19th century. It starred Ben Winshaw and Abbie Cornish in the tale of the last years of poet John Keats and his relationship with Fanny Browne. Patterson’s final film credit was last year’s Far From the Madding Crowd, set in Victorian England.
Patterson also had a handful of credits as a production designer, ranging from 2 Friends and The Last Days of Chez Nous to Holy Smoke and Bright Star.
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