Luciana Arrighi
Luciana Maria Arrighi is an Australian and Italian production designer. In 1993, she won an Oscar for Best Art Direction for the film Howards End. She also earned two more Oscar nominations in the same category for The Remains of the Day in 1994, and Anna and the King in 2000. In 2003, she won the BAFTA Award for Best Art Direction for the television film The Gathering Storm.
Career
Luciana Arrighi was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1940, daughter of Italian diplomat and former journalist Count Ernesto Arrighi, and Australian Eleanor, daughter of grazier Douglas Cox. Nellie had been a showgirl with J.C. Williamson Ltd, and later a model for Schiaparelli in Paris, and was distantly related by marriage to the novelist Patrick White ; over the course of their long friendship they claimed "cousinhood". Ernesto Arrighi was appointed consul at Melbourne in 1937, and met Nellie on a visit to Sydney. They married in 1939, and Ernesto was posted to Rio de Janeiro, where Luciana, their first child, was born. The family returned to Rome in 1943 before going to Nice on the French Riviera, and after the surrender of Italy to the Allies Ernesto was imprisoned by the Germans for "high treason" in 1943. On his release, he was given a diplomatic posting to Sydney, his wife and two daughters going ahead of him, but he died suddenly before being able to join them.Arrighi left Brazil with her parents when she was two years old and was raised and educated in Australia, studying at East Sydney Technical College. She went to the United Kingdom, where she worked for the BBC; she was spotted by Ken Russell, who used her talents in some of his early films such as Isadora Duncan, the Biggest Dancer in the World and Women in Love.
She went on to study painting in Italy and she has also worked in costume design in theatre and opera, including with Vienna State Opera, Opera Australia and The Royal Opera, Covent Garden. She lived in Paris for two years and was a model for French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent.
In 1993, Arrighi received the Silver Ribbon for Best Production Design Award and the Oscar for Best Art Direction for the film Howards End directed by James Ivory. She was also nominated for an Oscar for Best Art Direction for the film The Remains of the Day, also by James Ivory, and Anna and the King by Andy Tennant. She won the British BAFTA Award for Best Art Direction for the television film The Gathering Storm, directed by Richard Loncraine.
Personal life
In 1970, Arrighi married Captain Rupert Milo Talbot Chetwynd, of the Grenadier Guards and 21st SAS Regiment, later an adventurer and founder of a medical mission to Afghanistan. He was a descendant of the 6th Viscount Chetwynd. They had a son, Aaron, and daughter, Alalia, the artist Monster Chetwynd. Arrighi splits her time between London and France.Her French-born sister Niké Arrighi was a visual artist and actress.