The Hollywood Reporter's 25 Most Influential Interior Designers in L.A.

Academy Awards producer Brian Grazer loved the Architectural Digest green room Waldo Fernandez designed for this year’s Oscars so much that he hired him to update his recently purchased $12.5 million, 10,000-square-foot Spanish-style house in Santa Monica.

Such dramatic reactions are only fitting for a former film-set designer who went on to become icon Elizabeth Taylor’s decorator and proprietor of Waldo’s Designs. He also designed West Hollywood’s Soho House and just redid industry power spot Spago. “I am constantly inspired by movies,” says Fernandez, who designed the “unique, elegant and modern living room” in THR’s showhouse and was “inspired by the modern Century building” in which it’s housed. “I look at all my projects as a script and try to explain the design process to my clients that way.”

Who most epitomizes Hollywood style: “Elizabeth Taylor — her kindness to people. Yet she was very particular — she loved her clothes and jewelry, as everyone knows — and the fact that she was so determined and definite about what she liked was very Hollywood to me.”

Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified Lenny Kravitz as a Fernandez client.