Into The Woods Interview with Costume Designer Colleen Atwood

Have you ever won an Oscar before? Colleen Atwood does. Actually she knows the feeling all too well because she has won an Oscar 3 times!!!



She is a costume designer legend in Hollywood and I wouldn’t be surprised if she wins a fourth Oscar for her work in Into The Woods.



Check out what Colleen Atwood had to say about her role in creating costumes for Into The Woods…

This film had so many amazing characters and costumes to go with the characters, which was your favorite to work on?

You know, it’s kind of like children, it’s a weird question to ask, because I never like just one, one day some of them are definitely not my favorites. [LAUGHTER] I had a great time of course with Meryl’s costume because of the textile art that was involved in it.

Considering Meryl went to school for costume design, did she have any input or involvement in her costumes?

Well there’s not a aspect of a character development that Meryl isn’t involved in. She is the Meryl Streep. [LAUGHTER]
But, she understands costumes really well…any request she made to her costumes were all sort of related to movement in the costume and what it had to do for her. She embraced all the textiles in a way that somebody that really knew what it took to make it appreciated it, so it was a really gratifying collaboration to not only work with someone of her kind of amazing talent but somebody that kind of just loved going in the room and seeing what everybody was doing…She actually acknowledged they existed, which is really nice for the people that make the costumes…Meryl was just so kind and generous in that way.

You mention your costumes are like children, do you cringe a little bit inside when they’re wearing these amazing designs and the costumes are getting destroyed?

I like the costumes to look like they’re worn, so it doesn’t bother me. I cringe on a different level if I don’t have enough of them to be destroyed [LAUGHTER] But I don’t cringe on a artistic level at all.

Whose costume would you say involved the most work from your first thoughts to the finished product and why?

Well I’d say Emily’s because she was pregnant. [LAUGHTER] …when I got her, she was just barely pregnant and all of a sudden she got into that like kind of fifth month kind of thing and she came to work after a weekend and it was like she’d grown like two or three inches and I’m like what happened over the weekend?

So I was continually kind of modifying her costume because her bust was bigger and her belly was bigger, even though she was incredibly small for how pregnant she was…Thank goodness she was in an apron from the start [LAUGHTER]

What would be one of the costumes that you worked on that you just have such fond memories of?

Edward Scissorhands was the first movie that I ever got to do. So I think that costume for me will always be kind of close to my heart.

More recently, I love the red queen from the last Alice movie. The next one I just finished, she takes it to a whole other level. [LAUGHTER] so I think that that’s a fun costume and a fun kind of character that sticks with me…

When you get creatively blocked, what’s your solution?

Sometimes I escape. I read books or go driving.

When you watch a film, can you get past the costumes and see the whole film?

I really love movies…I always have my whole life…Watching my own work is harder, I’m more self critical than I am of other people, I think.

As a mom, did you make costumes for your kids at all or were they store bought?

In the early Halloween years, I did a lot of costumes. My favorite was when my daughter was in kindergarten and I made her a giant pumpkin, it was so cute with her little hands coming out and she hated it so much [LAUGHTER].

It’s my favorite holiday needless to say. But, when my daughter got to a certain age, she went through a huge Darth Vader phase, and then she wanted to be Batman Girl and then she went through a ninja turtle phase. She was a total victim of the store bought costume, so, so it was kind of embarrassing really. [LAUGHTER]
Into the Woods is rated PG and is in theaters now! Be sure to like Into the Woods on Facebook and follow them on Twitter @intothewoods.