Jean-Pierre Dorléac Dies: Emmy-Winning ‘Battlestar Galactica’ & ‘Somewhere In Time’ Costume Designer Was 83

Jean-Pierre Dorléac, the French costume designer who won Emmy Awards for his work on TV’s Battlestar Galactica and The Lot and was Oscar nominated for the film Somewhere in Time, died July 23 of natural causes at his Hollywood Hills home. He was 83. His death was reported by a family spokesperson to Deadline sister publication The Hollywood Reporter. Born April 12, 1943, in Toulon, France, Dorléac studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in France before moving with his family to the United States. He launched his show business career as an actor and costume design career in Los Angeles’ theater community, an early credit being a 1973 staging of Marat/Sade. By 1977 Dorléac was working as the costume designer for actor Nancy Walker in her TV series Blansky’s Beauties. Soon thereafter he was designing costumes for such TV series as The Bastard, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, The Rebels, Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls and many others. He won his first of two Emmy Awards for 1978’s Battlestar Galactica (his second would come with the 1999-2001 TV series The Lot set in 1930s Hollywood). In all, Dorléac was Emmy-nominated 11 times, including five for time-jumping series Quantum Leap. From left: Maren Jensen, Lorne Greene and Richard Hatch, in ‘Battlestar Galactica’ (1978) Universal Television/Everett Collection In 1980 Dorléac designed costumes for the feature films The Blue Lagoon, starring Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins, and the time-travel period romance Somewhere in Time starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. He was Oscar-nominated for the latter film. His most recent feature film credit was the 2004 World War II drama In Enemy Hands starring William H. Macy, Til Schweiger and Scott Caan. The author of the 2005 novel Abracabra Alakazama, Dorléac wrote about 1980s Hollywood in his 2015 memoir The Naked Truth: An Irreverent Chronicle of Delirious Escapades. He is survived by spouse Gilberto Mello.