Adelaide’s Fiona Crombie wins BAFTA on her way to Oscars

Adelaide designer Fiona Crombie continues her march to the Oscars by winning a BAFTA in London for her production design on quirky period drama The Favourite

• BAFTAs red carpet: Best and worst dressed
• BAFTAS 2019: All the winners and losers

Australian Fiona Crombie, who grew up in Adelaide, has tightened her grip on the Oscars after winning a BAFTA, the British equivalent of the Academy Awards, for her work on The Favourite.

Crombie who was responsible for the production design in the offbeat tragicomedy about the last of the Stuart monarchs, Queen Anne, looks almost certain to be one of two potential Australian award winners at the Oscars on February 25, after being undefeated this far in the film awards season.

A week earlier Crombie, who was a resident designer at Sydney Theatre Company before moving to London, won the prestigious Art Director’s Guild Award.

In her acceptance speech on Sunday Crombie thanked “the love of her life”, former Australian actor Peter Knowles who Crombie met while studying at NIDA and who now produces commercials in London.

Winners of the BAFTA production design award, Fiona Crombie (right) and Alice Felton. Picture: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

She also thanked her parents Judith Crombie, a former librarian at The Advertiser, and film director Donald Crombie who was the first director of drama at the newly instituted South Australian Film Corporation in the early 1970s.

Crombie, who last Friday evening attended a function at Kensington Palace hosted by Prince William for BAFTA nominees, accompanied by her father, won in the production design category, while fellow Australian Tony McNamara won for his original screenplay for The Favourite.

Crombie has worked closely with another former Adelaide talent, film director Justin Kurzel and was production designer on his films Snowtown (2011), about Adelaide’s Snowtown bank serial murders, and a new-generation Macbeth (2015).

For The Favourite, she created gloomy sets drenched with sumptuous textiles and quirky detail and used 80,000 candles to create the natural light director Yorgos Lanthimos wanted.

The Netflix film Roma and The Favourite were the big winners at the 72nd British Academy Film Awards in a night of few surprises.

Entering the night with 12 nominations The Favourite took home seven awards, including best actress for Olivia Colman and outstanding British film, but it was beaten to best film by Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma.

Cuaron won a record four personal BAFTAs for a single film from a record six personal nominations, including best director and cinematography.