As the production designer of several critically-acclaimed and influential films, Clay passionately believes in the quality and purpose of design and views his role as helping to create not only the physical but also the psychological climate for a director’s narrative. This principle is evident throughout a diverse body of work that ranges from the fanciful design of the BBC classic The Singing Detective, which earned Clay his first BAFTA Award nomination, to the starkly dystopian world of Alfonso Cuaròn’s Children of Men, which garnered a nomination from the Art Directors Guild and earned Clay a BAFTA Award for Best Production Design.
Clay’s credits include exemplary films for some of the industry’s most celebrated directors, including Richard Curtis’ Love Actually, Woody Allen’s Match Point and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Chris and Paul Weitz’s About a Boy, Atom Agoyan’s Felicia’s Journey, Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game, John Madden’s The Debt, Mike Newell’s Great Expectations, and Simon Curtis’ Woman in Gold.
Recently, Clay has enjoyed multiple collaborations with actor-director-producer, Kenneth Branagh, beginning with the reimagining of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, which earned Clay nominations for the Critics’ Choice Award and the Art Directors Guild Award for Production Design. Their partnership grew with the adaptation of Eoin Colfer’s young adult, fantasy novel, Artemis Fowl, followed by the crowd-pleasing Belfast which earned numerous accolades and honors, including nominations for the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Production Design and the British Independent Film Award (BIFA) for Best Production Design. Death on the Nile marks Clay’s fourth feature film collaboration with Branagh.