From Barbie to Anna Karenina

Hollywood’s Dynamic Production Design Duo

By Anthea Gerrie

They are two of the most successful women in film you’ve probably never heard of.

Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer have no PR people, no website, not even a permanent office to work from. But boy, are they sought after—no wonder, given their seven Oscar nominations for creating the look of richly visual movies from Barbie to Anna Karenina.

“Their work is so distinctive and unique, if you see a film they’ve worked on, you immediately know,” says Academy Museum of Motion Pictures curator Michelle Puetz. If you know them, you presumably know how to find them, but it has taken me, a non-insider, months to track down these veteran creatives.

“We’re pretty under the radar,” admits production designer Greenwood, who has the look of an elegant school principal in her black dress and statement silver necklace. “This business is hard enough without trying to create a profile,” adds Spencer, a redhead who manages to ooze a distinct sense of the bohemian despite the formal suit in which she has come to tea.

We are chatting in the members’ room of BAFTA—Britain’s equivalent of the Academy of Motion Pictures—on London’s Piccadilly, two hundred miles and a planet away from the north where Spencer grew up. “I’m from Yorkshire, where a real job is being a nurse or going down the mines,” jokes the set decorator, who specs every chair, mirror, and lamp, every scrap of wallpaper, and the tiniest details of the magical worlds the duo’s fictional characters occupy.

Most recently, that was Barbie—and surprisingly, given how familiar we think her world is, it was the duo’s toughest collaboration to date. “There were no locations as a starting point—we had to conjure up Barbieland from scratch because we had no point of reference,” explains Greenwood.

This passion is reflected in an incredibly innovative 2012 film adaptation of Anna Karenina, where nearly every scene begins on stage in a Russian theater doubling as a ballroom, an ice rink, and even a railway station, before moving into the landscape beyond.

“It was important not to re-create Mattel—our Barbie houses came from the script, the director’s mind, our own interpretation of the story, and influences from Americana,” adds Spencer. “You’re looking at ten thousand images, filtering them down, and ending up with maybe two hundred which are key,” chimes in Greenwood. “From there, you build a picture of what it’s going to look like, and at that point, you start to make models. Concept artists and professional model makers are brought in, and as the team grows, it’s like a dinner party, with twenty tables of four, each table working on different things.”

Thrillingly for Barbie fans, many of these sets, costumes, and props are on display at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, making up a major part of the exhibition devoted to the duo’s work. Especially interesting is a replica of the production office the women set up for Barbie, as they do for every film. At the heart of a space whose walls are crammed with swatches and image boards is a long table. “It’s got longer over the years because there are so many meetings,” explains Spencer. “Only our bit remains full of stuff; the rest is cleared so other people can sit down. They regard it as a bit of a haven where they can steal away for creative discussions,” adds Greenwood.

So used are the two to sitting down and starting work wherever they find themselves, they nearly fell foul of the museum when they actually used their pretend office. “We dressed it ourselves, re-creating our own, typically messy space,” explains Spencer. “It was so familiar, we went in the next morning, dumped our bags, and were making calls to the UK about our next film when they came in and said, ‘This is now an exhibit.’ They put a barrier around it, and we had to stop!”

The experience of helping filmmakers re-create their workspace was unique, says Puetz. “This is the first time we’ve done this kind of installation, building out the vision of artists who are on site. It was a magical experience—they are so funny and kind and so passionate about what they do.”

Greenwood and Spencer have worked together since meeting at the BBC. “I suspect they looked at each other in this very controlled environment and, recognizing something unconventional in each other, wondered if they belonged there,” posits Puetz. And from her description of the duo, whom she got to know over a week sipping tea in London two years before the exhibition opened—“They’re like sisters; they finish each other’s sentences, you feel they’ve known each other all their lives”—the two formed a bond which has endured for thirty years.

From the start, even though set decorators traditionally report to production designers, Greenwood and Spencer opted for a collaborative approach, which is not the industry norm. “On some films, set decorators and production designers hardly talk to each other, but Katie and I have never worked in that way,” says Greenwood. “We’ve worked together for so long, we’re accepted as a unit.”

They share a passion for the stage—Spencer’s career trajectory started when she saw a poster advertising a theater design course—“I had no idea that was something you could study”—while Greenwood confesses, “The only thing I could do at school was art. But after seeing a performance of Twelfth Night, I knew I wanted to be a part of that whole thing—not an actor, but involved in theatrical productions.”

This passion is reflected in an incredibly innovative 2012 film adaptation of Anna Karenina, where nearly every scene begins on stage in a Russian theater doubling as a ballroom, an ice rink, and even a railway station, before moving into the landscape beyond. The Academy Museum re-created an elaborate scale model of this theater, “as nothing was left from the production,” says Puetz, explaining studios rarely keep materials from completed films. They got luckier with 2017’s live-action Beauty and the Beast, from which key pieces of furniture the duo had been charged with creating as extra characters into which they would be transformed by Disney’s animators were lent to the museum.

There is only one Academy Award for production design rather than a separate one for set decoration, so Greenwood and Spencer have shared the seven Oscar nominations they’ve earned over eighteen years. Could the upcoming Victorian thriller Jack of Spades bring them an eighth nomination—and perhaps their first actual gold statuette?

It was the chance of working with multi-Oscar-winner Joel Coen that lured Greenwood and Spencer from more glamorous locations to the mud of the Scottish Highlands for Jack of Spades, Coen’s first film in the UK. They raved about the wild beauty of shooting locales like the Mull of Kintyre, as well as the film itself. “It’s such a rare thing now to make an intelligent period film,” opines Greenwood, although historical drama is a genre in which they’ve distinguished themselves many times, from Pride and Prejudice to Sherlock Holmes, Beauty and the Beast to Anna Karenina, and the bleak theaters of war depicted in Atonement and Darkest Hour. Creating such detail-demanding and often grueling worlds can be emotionally exhausting, so it’s no surprise they are enjoying a rest now that the Coen film has wrapped.

“When we’re not working, we like to lay low,” says Greenwood, exuding serenity as she sips another cup of tea. However, confesses Spencer, “We’re always in conversation with someone.” And if it takes another sixteen years to actually win the statuette, they’re prepared for that. “Diane Warren’s had twenty-four nominations,” says Greenwood of the legendary American songwriter who holds the record for the number of award nods preceding a win, “so who’s complaining?”

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Barbie to Anna Karenina: The Cinematic Worlds of Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer is on show at the Academy Museum until October 25, 2026. Visit AcademyMuseum.org to learn more.