Luis G. Hoyos, award-winning set designer best known for Memoirs of a Geisha and Dreamgirls, will receive the Art Directors Guild (ADG, IATSE Local 800) Lifetime Achievement Award from the Set Designers & Model Makers Council (SDMM). The ceremony will take place at the 27th Annual Art Directors Guild’s Excellence in Production Design Awards on Saturday, February 18, at the InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown. The announcement was made by Guild president Nelson Coates, ADG, and Awards producers Michael Allen Glover, ADG, and Megan Elizabeth Bell, ADG.
The award will spotlight Hoyos’ 30-year career and his artistic contributions to a plethora of the most memorable films. Most recently, he worked as a set designer on the hightly acclaimed and award winning films Babylon and The Batman, both nominees in the this year’s 2023 ADG Awards for their unforgettable art direction and set design. This is the last of four ADG Lifetime Achievement Awards, each representing the four ADG crafts that comprise the guild.
Said Kristen Davis, ADG, Set Designers & Model Makers Council chair, “The Set Designers and Model Makers of the ADG are very proud to honor Luis Hoyos with the Lifetime Achievement Award. His talents, hard work, and his guiding influence on the many art departments where he has worked in the last 30 years have been an inspiration to our members.”
Hoyos came to set designing for motion pictures by way of several years in architecture offices and a degree in architecture. A friend got him an interview with the art director of Stargate in 1993, starting off a three decade career working on many of the most honored films of that time
Memoirs of a Geisha received an Academy Award and Dreamgirls was nominated for an Oscar. Other notable and award-winning films that Hoyos worked on include Dunkirk, Oblivion, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, War of the Planet of the Apes, Tenet, Birds of Prey, Hulk, Minority Report, Pearl Harbor, Fight Club, Ocean’s Thirteen and Alien: Resurrection. His set designs have graced numerous Disney films including Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Tron: Legacy, and The Haunted Mansion.
As previously announced, Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker Baz Luhrmann (Elvis) and his producing partner and collaborator Academy Award- winning Catherine Martin will receive the Cinematic Imagery Award. Multi- Academy Award- winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro (Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio) will be honored with the William Cameron Menzies Award, celebrating his visually striking and emotionally rich body of work.
Michael Denering (Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, Batman Returns, Jurassic Park) will be honored with an ADG Lifetime Achievement Award from Scenic, Title, and Graphic Artists (STG); storyboard artist Janet Kusnick (Silverado, George of the Jungle and Kill Bill 2) by the Illustrators and Matte Artists (IMA); two-time Academy Award®-nominated production designer Lilly Kilvert (The Last Samurai, The Crucible, Legends of the Fall) by the Art Directors (AD).
The Art Directors Guild’s Excellence in Production Design Awards honor excellence in production design in theatrical motion pictures, television, commercials, music videos and animated feature films.
ADG Awards are bestowed upon productions filmed in the U.S. by producers signatory to the IATSE agreement and upon foreign entries without restrictions.
Olivia Hussey, star of 1968 film “Romeo and Juliet,” dies at 73
Olivia Hussey, the actor who starred as a teenage Juliet in the 1968 film "Romeo and Juliet," has died, her family said on social media Saturday. She was 73.
Hussey died on Friday, "peacefully at home surrounded by her loved ones," a statement posted to her Instagram account said.
Hussey was 15 when director Franco Zeffirelli cast her in his adaptation of the William Shakespeare tragedy after spotting her onstage in the play "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," which also starred Vanessa Redgrave.
"Romeo and Juliet" won two Oscars and Hussey won a Golden Globe for best new actress for her part as Juliet, opposite British actor Leonard Whiting, who was 16 at the time.
Decades later Hussey and Whiting brought a lawsuit against Paramount Pictures alleging sexual abuse, sexual harassment and fraud over nude scenes in the film.
They alleged that they were initially told they would wear flesh-colored undergarments in a bedroom scene, but on the day of the shoot Zeffirelli told the pair they would wear only body makeup and that the camera would be positioned in a way that would not show nudity. They alleged they were filmed in the nude without their knowledge.
The case was dismissed by a Los Angeles County judge in 2023, who found their depiction could not be considered child pornography and the pair filed their claim too late.
Hussey was born on April 17, 1951, in Bueno Aires, Argentina, and moved to London as a child.
She also starred as Mary, mother of Jesus, in the 1977 television series "Jesus of Nazareth," and in the 1978 adaptation of Agatha Christie's "Death on the Nile."
She is survived by her husband, David Glen Eisley, her three children and a grandson.
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