Academy Award Winner Barbara Ling Dead at 73, Cause of Death Released

Barbara Ling, the Academy Award-winning production designer behind Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, has died. She was 73.

Ling died on July 7 in Santa Barbara after being diagnosed with cancer, a spokesperson for WME confirmed to Deadline.

Her family remembered her as an artist whose work left a lasting impact on the film industry.

“Equally gifted at period authenticity, contemporary realism, and stylized fantasy, Ling leaves behind a legacy that profoundly influenced the art of production design and the visual language of modern filmmaking,” the family said in a statement.

Born in August 1952, Ling began her career designing sets and lighting for theater, opera and musical productions, working on more than 200 stage shows before transitioning to Hollywood. Her first screen credit came as a lighting designer on The Pee-Wee Herman Show in 1981, and she made her feature film production design debut with True Stories in 1986.

Over the following decades, Ling built an extensive résumé that included Less Than Zero, The Doors, Fried Green Tomatoes, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, Hearts in Atlantis, No Reservations, and A Man Called Otto. She also worked on the upcoming Michael Jackson biopic Michael.

Ling received the Oscar for best production design alongside set decorator Nancy Haigh for Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood. The pair also earned an Art Directors Guild Award and Critics Choice Award for the film, as well as BAFTA and Satellite Award nominations.

Reflecting on the project in a 2019 interview with Deadline, Ling spoke about the creative challenge of recreating 1969 Los Angeles.

“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,” she said. “In this case, the uniqueness of this will be very hard to beat afterwards.”

She also told Variety that she tracked down original blacklight posters on eBay to help recreate the era, adding that Tarantino appreciated the stories behind the artwork and wanted surviving artists to receive royalties for their work.

Rita Wilson, who produced A Man Called Otto, paid tribute to Ling on Instagram, calling her “quiet, kind, detailed, tenacious, and funny.”

“She was one of the greats,” Wilson wrote. “And she will be missed.”