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Jean-Pierre Dorléac, the costume designer behind “Somewhere in Time” and “Battlestar Galactica,” died July 23 from natural causes. He was 83.
Dorléac earned an Oscar nomination for the 1981 film “Somewhere in Time.”
He also landed 11 Emmy nominations for his TV work, winning two for “Battlestar Galactica” in 1979 and “The Lot” in 2001.
Dorléac was born in Toulon, France, in 1943 to an American military service member stationed with his family in Europe. There he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in France. After his family moved back to the United States, he started his career as an actor in Hollywood. But when one of his theater productions was looking for a costume designer, he took that opportunity, which led him to design the costumes for the play “Marat/Sade” in 1973 for West Coast Theatre in Los Angeles, earning critical acclaim and a Drama Critics Circle Award.
He became Edith Head’s protégé, and as a film and television costume designer he designed for multiple productions. Dorléac was also a writer. Among his works, he wrote “Abracabra Alakazama” in 2005, and “The Naked Truth: An Irreverent Chronicle of Delirious Escapades” in 2015.
He frequently shared gossip and opinions on social media, where he became a controversial figure. Back in 2021, he took to Twitter and made several comments about “Battlestar Galactica” actor Patrick Macnee. He wrote, “Patrick Macnee was just as abysmal, conniving, nasty and evil as the part he played [Count Iblis]. He was a horrid person and a lousy actor who went out of his way to make life miserable for others on the show. The only thing of value to him was his ego. A major, terrible disappointment.”
In his tell-all, “The Naked Truth,” he wrote, “I think this business is like King of Hearts, where they opened the asylum doors and let the patients loose. No one in production knows much about anything, and all the behind-the-scenes people are merely pretending, just like actors. They have no inkling regarding good taste, flair or panache, or the ability to create.”
He is survived by his spouse, Gilberto Mello, whom he met 41 years ago in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
