Roy Forge Smith, a veteran production designer who worked on the classic Monty Python and the Holy Grail and two seasons of Ghost Whisperer, has died. He was 87. His friend and collaborator John Gray said Smith died February 6 but gave no other details.
“Roy was the master of doing things simply,” writer-director Gray said. “It’s the biggest and most important thing I learned from him (among many many things); in the midst of complexity, look for the simplicity.”
Courtesy of John Gray
A two-time Art Directors Guild Award nominee for the telefilms Martin and Lewis (2002) and The Hunley (1999), Smith worked in film and television for more than 40 years, starting in TV at the BBC. Among his dozens of credits are Far From the Madding Crowd, Jabberwocky, Mrs. Soffel, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the early-’90s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trilogy and the Mel Brooks films Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Dracula: Dead and Loving It.
During the past two decades, the London native worked in television, doing seven telefilms with Gray before handling production design for Ghost Whisperer for 44 episodes from 2005-07. Gray created the CBS drama starring Jennifer Love Hewitt as a small-town newlywed who could communicate with the spirits of the recently departed.