Kristina Gwyn Zea is an American production designer, costume designer, art director, and director in film and television. Born and educated in New York City, she discovered she had a talent for design while working as a stylist for a commercial photographer. Her career in production design blossomed in the 1980s and 1990s as she worked on numerous films for a trio of directors—Alan Parker, James L. Brooks, and Jonathan Demme—and across a wide selection of genres, including period, contemporary, drama, and horror. She has also directed several HBO films.
Early life and education
Kristina Gwyn Zea was born on October 24, 1948, in New York City. Her father was James Gwyn Zea; her mother, Alice Joy Zea, was a list broker. She has one sister. She grew up in the Stuyvesant Town residential development in Manhattan. Zea attended the High School of Music & Art in Manhattan. She then studied at Middlebury College in Vermont for two years before transferring to the Columbia University School of General Studies, where she earned her B.A. in English literature. While she intended to become a journalist, as an undergraduate student she supported herself working as a stylist for a commercial photographer and found she had a talent for it. She continued on this job for four years after graduation.
Career
Costume and production design
Zea was hired by Woody Allen as the design coordinator for his 1978 film Interiors. She designed costumes for three Alan Parker films, Fame, Shoot the Moon, and Birdy, and also worked as art director for Parker's Angel Heart. She worked for James L. Brooks as costume designer on Terms of Endearment, art director on Broadcast News, and production designer on As Good As It Gets. She also designed "outrageous" costumes for the 1986 stage production of The Balcony, directed by JoAnne Akalaitis, at the American Repertory Theater. Zea's career in film production design blossomed in the late 1980s and 1990s with her creation of a variety of innovative sets. These include Jonathan Demme's Married to the Mob, in which she designed "wonderfully tacky" sets including a Florida hotel room dominated by "the color turquoise to demonstrate the mob's lavish and cheesy taste in décor", Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas, and Demme's The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, and Beloved. For The Silence of the Lambs, Zea created visual imagery for sets for which no description existed in the novel or screenplay. For example, the script tersely described the room in which the police officers found their fallen comrades as "a snapshot from hell"; Zea created the look and the contents. She similarly invented the look of Dr. Lecter's dungeon-like room with its unusual paraphernalia, and Demme used this visual imagery "to pace the film in the absence of words". Demme told The New York Times: "Neither of us had much of a stomach for the images of 'Lambs' – but it would have hurt to have someone with a taste for gore. Kristi's sensitivity made it possible for a lot of people to watch the film". In 2004 she worked for Demme again on The Manchurian Candidate. Zea's production design for Revolutionary Road, for which she received an Oscar nomination, entailed the dismantling, reconstruction and redecoration of two houses in Darien, Connecticut. For the home of the Wheelers, Zea put in a different kitchen and used "simple and spare" wall treatments and furnishings to depict the couple's hesitancy to adapt to suburban life. The homeowners were paid in "the low six figures" for the breaking apart and rebuilding of their homes, as well as use of a beach house in Rowayton throughout the production.
As producer
Zea served as associate producer for the 1986 film Lucas. She also served as associate producer and second unit director on Philadelphia. She co-produced As Good as It Gets with James L. Brooks and Bridget Johnson.
As director
Zea directed a 1990 music video for Laurie Anderson, and a 1991 half-hour HBO television film, A Domestic Dilemma, produced by Jonathan Demme. She produced and directed her first documentary film, Everybody Knows…Elizabeth Murray, which premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. In 2018, she directed Notes from the Field for HBO.
Zea and her former husband, Michael Kuhling, an architect, have one daughter, Norma. Since 2004, Zea has resided in Valley Cottage, New York, in a home she redecorated with an eclectic selection of items, including props from The Silence of the Lambs, Sleepers, and The Departed. Zea presents films and moderates discussion panels for the Rivertown Film Festival.
