CAROLINE HANANIA was born in the Lebanon, where her father was Dean at the American University of Beirut. Educated in England, she studied fine art at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome, Italy; where she spent a year working as assistant to surrealist artist Mayo, whose costume designs are a feature of Marcel Carne's classic film 'Les Enfants du Paradis' ('Children of Paradise').
After completing her BA at Camberwell School of Art in London, Caroline began her design career in the London Theatre culminating in a three-year term as resident designer with the Common Stock Theatre Company. She entered the Film industry working with Production Designer Andrew McAlpine as Art Director on productions including 'The House' (Mike Figgis), 'High Season' (Clare Peploe) and 'Sid and Nancy' (Alex Cox).
For over twenty years, Caroline has worked as a Production Designer both in Europe and the U.S. She has worked extensively with Peter Chelsom and has designed all of his feature films, ‘Hear my Song’, ‘Funny Bones’, ‘The Mighty’, ‘Town and Country’, ‘Serendipity’ and ‘Shall We Dance’ starring Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez and most recently ‘Hannah Montana-The Movie’ for Disney which was filmed in Tennessee and Los Angeles.
Caroline also designed “Evening’ for Focus Features, the script was written by Michael Cunningham and the movie stars Vanessa Redgrave, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close and Clare Danes. It was filmed in Newport, Rhode Island and directed by Lajos Koltai.
When not designing films she works at her own Art, painting, and drawing and also hand building Ceramics. She learnt her hand building techniques with potter Kate Mellors in London and has also studied at the Frank Romero studio in Los Angeles learning more about glazes, and se has her own studio.
She lived as a child in Beirut, Lebanon, then Rome and London. Caroline has lived in California for the last ten years and lives near Paso Robles, with her husband Chris Harvey on their Vineyard.