Barbara Ling, the Oscar-winning production designer behind Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Fried Green Tomatoes, and the blockbuster biopic Michael, has died.
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Ling passed away on July 9 in Santa Barbara following a battle with cancer, per The Hollywood Reporter.
Ling was 73.
Born in August 1952, Ling began her career designing sets and lighting for more than 200 theater, opera, and musical productions. She made her Hollywood debut as a lighting designer on the 1981 comedy special The Pee-Wee Herman Show, before transitioning to production design with David Byrne’s True Stories (1986).
Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, Ling established herself as a sought-after production designer, with credits including Less Than Zero (1987), The Doors (1991), and Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), on which she also served as associate producer. She continued to work steadily into the 2000s and beyond, with notable projects such as Batman Forever (1995), Batman & Robin (1997), Hearts in Atlantis (2001), No Reservations (2007), and A Man Called Otto (2022).
Ling and set decorator Nancy Haigh won the Best Production Design Oscar for their work on Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood. The project also earned them an Art Directors Guild Award and a Critics’ Choice Award, along with BAFTA and Satellite Award nominations.
Ling also served as production designer on Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic. The film has been a massive commercial success, grossing nearly $1 billion worldwide since its April release.
She is survived by her wife, Lindsay, and their sons, Clay and Will.