Stuart Craig, the multi-Oscar winning production designer for The English Patient, The Elephant Man and the Harry Potter films, has died aged 83.
His family told the Guardian he had died peacefully at home on Sunday after 14 years with Parkinson’s disease. “Our beloved husband and father, deeply loved and respected, was not only known for his talent but also for his kindness and we are moved by hearing of how many lives he touched. He will live on in our hearts forever.”
Craig worked on a glittering array of high-profile British and Hollywood films from the early 1980s onwards, winning best art direction Oscars for Gandhi, Dangerous Liaisons and The English Patient and was nominated for eight more, including for four Potters. His record at the Baftas was even more impressive: 16 nominations and three wins.
David Heyman, producer of the Harry Potter series, said: “Stuart Craig was one of the greatest production designers to work in film. He was also the kindest, most generous and supportive man. He had exquisite taste and a wonderful sense of story. He also had the extraordinary ability to bring out the very best in everyone around him. It was a privilege to work with him, and to be in his orbit.” David Yates, director of the final four Potter films, said: “Stuart was a dear friend and colleague: he was a giant in our industry, graceful, talented, stubborn and always nurturing and supporting emerging design talent. We will all miss him a great deal.”
Born in Norwich in 1942, Craig studied film design at the Royal College of Art before working in the art department on a variety of films in the 60s and 70s, including the Bond spoof Casino Royale, the Albert Finney musical Scrooge, and the George Macdonald Fraser adaptation Royal Flash. Craig established himself as an art director on the war epic A Bridge Too Far and superhero flick Superman, before making his breakthrough as production designer on The Elephant Man, David Lynch’s brilliantly atmospheric fable of Victorian London.
The latter film secured his first Oscar nomination, and Craig followed it up by reuniting with A Bridge Too Far director Richard Attenborough on the latter’s long-gestating Gandhi biopic. Conceived on a colossal scale (with the funeral scene alone estimated to have 300,000 extras), it won Craig his first Oscar, one of the film’s total haul of eight, including best picture and best director for Attenborough.
Craig went on to play a crucial role in some of the most successful and high-profile films of the subsequent four decades, becoming best known for lavish period sets rendered in sumptuous detail. After Gandhi, he designed The Mission for director Roland Joffé, won his second Oscar for 18th-century-set Dangerous Liaisons, and worked with Attenborough again on Chaplin, another biopic. In 1997 Craig’s achieved possibly his high point in serious period drama, winning his third Oscar for The English Patient, adapted from Michael Ondaatje’s novel. Shortly thereafter Craig completed probably his best known non-period film: the Richard Curtis romcom Notting Hill.
Craig was then hired for what is likely to remain his outstanding achievement, designing all eight Harry Potter films, beginning with Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, released in 2001. He later told the Guardian: “I was decorating a bedroom for my as-yet-unborn grandson when I got the call to come to Los Angeles and meet David and Chris. I read the novel on the plane over. My first reaction was fright: ‘How the hell are we going to do this?’” He and his crew took over Leavesden studios, a repurposed former aerodrome, and the studio became renowned for the dizzying variety of sets and workshops that Craig built. Heyman said: “Stuart Craig was vital to the films’ success, no question. Hogwarts is his creation, his vision.” After the films finished production, Craig was asked to design the Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme parks, and continued his collaboration with the Potter film franchise by designing the three Fantastic Beasts films, released between 2016 and 2022.
Craig’s most valued collaborator was set decorator Stephenie McMillan, whom he worked with on 16 films, beginning with Chaplin and taking in The English Patient, Notting Hill and all the Potter films. On McMillan’s death in 2013, Craig wrote: “Her work was always characterised by technical finesse, elegance and wit.”
Craig was married to Patricia Stangroom in 1965, who survives him along with two children, Becky and Laura, and four grandchildren.