Ann Bishop Roth (born October 30, 1931) is an American costume designer. In a career spanning over six decades, she is recognized for her prolific work across stage and screen. She has received various accolades, including two Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, and a Tony Award.
Roth's first Hollywood film was 1964's The World of Henry Orient, where her designs included "monogrammed handmade yellow silk pajamas" for glamorous womanizer Peter Sellers.[2]
According to Glenn Frankel, Roth "designed not just costumes but characters" for the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy.[4][5] Roth found elegant but grimy white pants for Dustin Hoffman's character Ratso Rizzo on street-sale tables in New York City. Because Jon Voight's fringed suede jacket had to "look real and unhip," Roth made it herself. For Brenda Vaccaro's socialite character to wear in a sex scene, Roth paid $200 for a fox-fur jacket owned by one of her neighbors.[6]
Roth as costume designer created a "show-stopping" nightgown for Barbra Streisand to wear in her first non-musical film The Owl and the Pussycat (1970). The short black nightgown featured appliqué pink hands cupping the breasts[7] and, to quote Roth's own description, "a heart on her pee-pee."[2] Interviewed in 2013 about the origins of the costume idea, Roth said that her research included "looking for dirty, erotic, skuzzy underwear" in the pornographic magazine Screw, after which "somehow or another I made it up."[8] Roth later re-used her hands-on-breasts design for the 2013 stage play The Nance,[8] which won that year's Tony Award for costume design.[9]
Roth's first Oscar nomination was for 1984's Places in the Heart, set in Depression-era Texas.[10] Roth persuaded Sally Field that, for her "going-into-town-to-ask-for-a-loan-at-the-bank" scenes, a 1930s-type crotchless girdle would help her to walk and sit the right way.[2] The costume Oscar that year, however, went to Miloš Forman's Amadeus.[11]
Roth's costumes for three distinct time frames in The English Patient (1996) earned her first Oscar. According to producer Saul Zaentz, Roth worked for half her usual salary on the film "because she believed in the screenplay."[12] Roth's research for the costumes included the British Royal Geographical Society archives and 1930s photos of Egypt by photojournalist Lee Miller. Many of the film's varied military uniforms were authentic from the period; others were copied line-for-line from originals by a Savile Row tailor.[13][14]
Also in 1996, Roth did costumes for The Birdcage, a comedy film starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane as the flamboyant owners of a Florida drag club. Talking about his costume, Williams remembered "those ballroom pants and the silk shirts with the shoulder pads. The details were amazing. This was a guy who was still living in the ’70s. The clothes captured exactly who Armand was for me."[12]
In the 2023 film Barbie, Roth appears onscreen in a cameo role, portraying and credited as "the woman on a bench." In the scene, Barbie sits down besides Roth and tells the 91 year-old that she is "so beautiful", and Roth responds with a smile, "I know it."[2] In a Rolling Stone interview, director Greta Gerwig said that the brief scene "doesn’t lead anywhere" but "If I cut the scene, I don’t know what this movie is about."[16]Maureen Dowd in The New York Times described Roth's interaction with Barbie as a "pivotal scene."[2]
^ abcdefDowd, Maureen (July 23, 2023). "Ann Roth Is Hollywood's Secret Weapon". The New York Times. Retrieved July 30, 2023. Ms. Roth has a pivotal scene with Margot Robbie in the "Barbie" movie, directed by her friend Greta Gerwig (Ms. Roth calls her "Gret").
^Frankel, Glenn (March 13, 2021). "Dressing Ratso". Air Mail. Retrieved July 30, 2023. Roth told me she starts from a simple premise: she doesn't just make costumes; she makes characters. The idea was to find the clothes Ratso would have bought from the places he would have bought them—or, in his case, the places he might have stolen them from
^ ab"Brooklyn designer suing Yoko Ono, but sexy concept dates to Barbra Streisand". Brooklyn Eagle. March 26, 2013. Retrieved July 30, 2023. A Brooklyn fashion designer is suing Yoko Ono for $10 million, claiming she ripped off her sexy clothing line featuring flimsy fabrics, cutouts and "hands" positioned over strategic body parts – a look made famous in 1970 by Barbra Streisand in the smash film The Owl and the Pussycat.
^"The talented Ann Roth". Live Design Online. February 1, 2000. Retrieved August 1, 2023. There are very few people who have done as much in the 30s as I have," she says, "but when I did English Patient, I wouldn't have dreamed of doing it without starting research again.
^ ab"Costumes with character". Morning Call. April 3, 1997. Retrieved August 3, 2023. Roth, a native of Hanover, York County, has lived in Martins Creek since 1969, when she moved there from Manhattan with her husband, the now-deceased lighting designer Harry Green.
^"A Thousand Shades of Weather-Beaten Khaki". LA Times. November 14, 1996. Retrieved August 3, 2023. Relying on such sources as the British Royal Geographic Society archives, including photos of a map-making expedition believed to have included de Almasy, Roth learned that, on safari, the men occasionally dressed in suits and the women in furs.
^"Ann Roth". Netflix Queue. April 1, 2021. Retrieved August 3, 2023.
^"Oscar Winning Costume Designer Ann Roth: "It's Not The Costume, It's The Character"". The Observer. January 26, 2022. Retrieved July 30, 2023. In October, she received her third Lifetime Achievement Award—this, the Ming Cho Lee Award from the Henry Hewes Design Awards. She also has the Irene Sharaff Award from the Theater Development Fund and a place in the Theater Hall of Fame on the walls of the Gershwin.
