Barbara Ling Dead: ‘Michael’ & ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ Production Designer Was 73

Barbara Ling, the production designer behind Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019) and Michael (2026), has died. She was 73.

The Academy Award winner died on Thursday in Santa Barbara after she was diagnosed with cancer, a WME spokesperson announced.

Born in August 1952, Ling got her start in Hollywood as a lighting designer on the 1981 comedy special The Pee-Wee Herman Show, before taking on production design with David Byrne’s True Stories (1986).

Ling found her stride as a production designer in the ’80s and ’90s, working on films like Less Than Zero (1987), The Doors (1991), Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), on which she also served as an associate producer, Batman Forever (1995), Batman & Robin (1997), Hearts in Atlantis (2001), No Reservations (2007) and A Man Called Otto (2022).

Along with set decorator Nancy Haigh, Ling won the Best Production Design Oscar for their work on Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, also earning her an Art Directors Guild Award and a Critics’ Choice Award, as well as BAFTA and Satellite Award nominations.

While discussing her work on the ’69 period piece with Deadline in 2019, Ling said, “How could you not love the idea of, every new thing you do is a completely new set of rules and inventions? [As a designer], your head never stops. In this case, the uniqueness of this will be very hard to beat afterwards.”

Most recently, Ling worked on director Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic, which has grossed nearly $1B worldwide since its release in April.

The Hollywood Reporter was first to break the news of Ling’s death.