Ann Roth

Roth is a Carnegie Mellon graduate who began her career as a scenery painter for the Pittsburgh Opera. She intended to remain in the field of production design until she met Irene Sharaff at the Bucks County Playhouse. Sharaff invited her to California to assist her with costumes on the film Brigadoon and suggested Roth apprentice with her for five films and five Broadway productions before setting out on her own.

Roth's first Hollywood film was 1964's The World of Henry Orient, where her designs included "monogrammed handmade yellow silk pajamas" for glamorous womanizer Peter Sellers.

Roth next designed costumes for the 1969 film Midnight Cowboy. Roth as costume designer created a nightgown for Barbra Streisand to wear in her first non-musical film The Owl and the Pussycat (1970). Roth later re-used her hands-on-breasts design for the 2013 stage play The Nance, which won that year's Tony Award for costume design.

Roth's first Oscar nomination was for 1984's Places in the Heart, set in Depression-era Texas.

Roth's costumes for three distinct time frames in The English Patient (1996) earned her first Oscar.

Also in 1996, Roth did costumes for The Birdcage, a comedy film starring starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane as the flamboyant owners of a Florida drag club.

Her most-awarded film was 2020's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, where her costume designs (including flapper costumes and a rubber body suit for Viola Davis based on the body measurements of Aretha Franklin) won the Costume Designers Guild Award for Excellence in Period Film, Britain's BAFTA, and the Academy Award for Best Costume Design.

In the 2023 film Barbie, Roth appears onscreen in a cameo role, portraying and credited as "the woman on a bench."

Roth's more than one hundred screen credits for costume design include The World of Henry Orient, Midnight Cowboy, Klute, Working Girl, Silkwood, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Mambo Kings, The Birdcage, Primary Colors, Cold Mountain, Closer, Freedomland, The Good Shepherd, Margot at the Wedding, Mamma Mia!, Evening, and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.

Roth's dozens of stage credits include The Odd Couple, The Star-Spangled Girl, Purlie, Seesaw, They're Playing Our Song, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Biloxi Blues, Butley, The Vertical Hour, Deuce, and The Waverly Gallery.