Early life and education
Stewart grew up in Camden Town, London. She trained in theatre design at Central Saint Martins and later earned a Master's degree in Architecture from the Royal College of Art, a background that gave her an unusually rigorous structural grounding before she moved into film.1
Career
Mike Leigh years (1993-2004)
Stewart made her film debut as art director on Mike Leigh's Naked (1993). By her own account it was "very hard work" and "a bit of a shock," but the collaboration proved formative.1 She continued as art director on Secrets & Lies and as set designer on Career Girls and Topsy-Turvy (1999). The Victorian music-hall epic Topsy-Turvy earned Stewart her first Academy Award nomination for Best Production Design. She stepped up to full production designer credit on Leigh's All or Nothing (2002) and Vera Drake (2004), the latter receiving a BAFTA nomination for Best Production Design.2
Tom Hooper collaboration (2005-2015)
The most celebrated chapter of Stewart's career grew from her partnership with director Tom Hooper. Their work together began with the HBO miniseries Elizabeth I (2005), which won Stewart a Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Art Direction.2
The collaboration moved into feature films with The Damned United (2009) and then reached international prominence with The King's Speech (2010). To prepare, Stewart researched period settings through archival newsreels and visits to the Victoria and Albert Museum. The film won Stewart the Art Directors Guild Excellence in Production Design Award, which she has described as her proudest individual award, and brought her a second Academy Award nomination.2
Les Misérables (2012) demanded an entirely different scale. Stewart traced Victor Hugo's narrative geography through France and visited Hugo's Paris residence to ground her design decisions before building the film's vast period Paris sets. The film won her a BAFTA Award for Best Production Design (shared with set decorator Anna Lynch-Robinson) and a third Oscar nomination.2 Her work on The Danish Girl (2015) completed the Hooper cycle with a fourth Academy Award nomination.2
Broader filmography
Beyond her signature collaborations, Stewart has demonstrated consistent range across genre and scale. Selected credits include:
- Muppets Most Wanted (2014)
- A Cure for Wellness (2016)
- Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (2017)
- Cats (2019)
- Eternals (2021, Marvel Studios)
- Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)
- The First Omen (2024)
- Kraven the Hunter (2024)
- Nuremberg (2025)
Her television work includes the long-running BBC series Call the Midwife and the BBC thriller Hard Sun.3
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)
Stewart was hired as production designer on Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, directed by Gil Kenan and produced by Jason Reitman and Ivan Reitman's Ghost Corps. With the film set largely in New York, the practical production was based in the United Kingdom, placing all major sets on London soundstages.
The Firehouse
Stewart designed a three-floor version of the Ghostbusters' iconic firehouse headquarters, connected by a working fire pole. The set was modeled on Los Angeles' Engine Co. 23, the real-world building whose interior served as the firehouse in the prime-canon films. The basement housing the ghost containment array received the most extensive construction attention and saw the bulk of the action during filming. Stewart added new angles to the basement that revealed portions of the space audiences had never seen before, allowing the design to feel simultaneously familiar and expansive.4 A creepy attic level was also built, serving as the location where the character Trevor discovers a snack-food-hoarding Slimer.4
The Paranormal Research Center
The film's newly introduced Paranormal Research Center, which functions as Winston Zeddemore's privately funded ghost-research facility, was conceived as an abandoned and fictitious aquarium repurposed for scientific use. Stewart drew design inspiration from a 1930s Art Deco aquarium that had existed in Baltimore, which informed the tile work and geometric shapes throughout the interior. For the exterior, she identified a large, round building on Staten Island as a reference, and the building's curvilinear silhouette carried through into the corridors, arches, and aqueous forms of the interior spaces.5 The set incorporated a fully dressed containment lab, experimental ghost-busting equipment developed for Winston's operation, and numerous in-world Easter eggs for fans.5
The Ghostbusters firehouse is among the most replicated locations in the GBFans.com community, and details of the Frozen Empire set's layout, dimensions, and design choices have been actively discussed on the GBFans.com forum, including analysis of how the new firehouse floor plan differs from the 1984 original.6
References
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Wikipedia, "Eve Stewart," accessed June 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_Stewart
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WikiMili, "Eve Stewart," drawing from Wikipedia and ADG/BAFTA award records. https://wikimili.com/en/Eve_Stewart
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Production Designers Collective, member profile for Eve Stewart. https://www.productiondesignerscollective.org/member/eve-stewart/
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The Credits (Motion Picture Association), "How Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Cinematographer Eric Steelberg Brought Slimer & the Firehouse Back to Life," April 2024. https://www.motionpictures.org/2024/04/how-ghostbusters-frozen-empire-cinematographer-eric-steelberg-brought-slimer-the-firehouse-back-to-life/
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Ghostbusters News, "Adam Savage tours Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire's research lab set," March 26, 2024. https://ghostbustersnews.com/2024/03/26/adam-savage-tours-ghostbusters-frozen-empires-research-lab-set/
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GBFans.com forum thread, "Firehouse layout wrong in Frozen Empire?" https://www.gbfans.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=51708
