The job that earned costume designer Monique Prudhomme an Oscar nomination this year started in 2007, as always, with her resume on a director's desk.

The director was Terry Gilliam, the London-based American whose out-there fantasies run from the Monty Python catalogue to such mind-benders as Brazil and The Fisher King. The movie was The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, to be filmed in London and Vancouver with a cast that included Christopher Plummer as an immortal showman, Tom Waits as the devil and Heath Ledger as a modern-day con man.

"My resume was on Terry Gilliam's desk, I was pretty happy with that," says Prudhomme, whose previous work included the dorky gym shorts sported by Michael Cera in Juno.

She met with Gilliam at the 319 Main Street theatre and offices owned by the late Vancouver producer Bill Vince, where she showed the director mask-themed contemporary magazine fashion spreads and archival illustrations of 16th century commedia dell'arte actors.

"I read the script and thought this is a costume designer's dream, crazy, beautiful with so much imagery," she says. Plummer's title character runs a flea-bitten travelling show, whose main attraction is a magic mirror that transports people to their innermost desires. "I thought Terry Gilliam is probably a million ideas ahead of me, all I could do was bring things that inspire me."

There's a pause as her eyes moisten for a moment. "I got the job and then . . . you know, then, the rest is history."

That history included filming along the banks of the Thames during the bitterly cold late-2007 winter, Ledger passing away in New York during a break between filming in London and Vancouver, and the film's unlikely resurrection on a Vancouver sound stage in the spring of 2008 as actors Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell stepped in as versions of Ledger's character in the movie's fantasy world.

Prudhomme first met Ledger with Gilliam at the actor's New York home before filming started, when she brought some costume samples to look over.

"I had brought this white suit, and he said, 'Oh, I like that.' White became his signature."

Ledger's character Tony is first spotted by Parnassus and his group hanging under London's Blackfriars Bridge, wearing that white suit. They pull him up and adopt him into their group.

Filming in London was gruelling but creatively inspiring, she says.

"It was fantastic, but we shot outside all the time, and all night. Everybody got the flu, it was inescapable. We would never sleep well during the day. You finish at six o'clock in the morning, start at four in the afternoon."

Despite the flu that plagued Ledger, Plummer and much of the crew, Gilliam's vision kept them energized, Prudhomme says. "Terry liked pageantry, those big things, he loves to be interested. It's very difficult not to be friends with Terry."

The costume designer and her assistants have a physically intimate job, fitting and adjusting the actors' clothes each day.

"I work close to the body, to the actors," she says. "Heath was a very warm person, very affectionate, very giving."

That intimacy made Ledger's death an intensely felt loss.

"We all had broken hearts, especially the people who were close to him. We were all very tight, he was so full of life, he had lots of projects. He was engaged with his daughter, he was very close to Terry. You could see they were working really well together."

The movie seemed doomed after Ledger passed away. Earlier, Gilliam told me he telephoned Depp, a friend and past colleague, simply to commiserate about the loss, and the actor surprised him with an offer to help. Gilliam then reconceived the script to allow for physical changes to Tony when he went through the magic mirror, and got Law and Farrell on board as well.

"After the shock of losing Heath nobody wanted to lose the movie," says Prudhomme, who was tasked with coming up with versions of Ledger's costume tailored for each of the three new actors. "When the guys came in it was such a relief."

First to come was Depp, playing Tony as a fantasy seducer.

"It was so eerie when he put the suit on, the cravat and the mask, and he came on set. We had all goose-bumps -- I swear that Heath Ledger was right there with us all the time. When Jude came in that was strange, too. I don't think I really got used to the fact that I was seeing different actors."

Prudhomme herself came to B.C. from Montreal in the early 1980s, to work on a Canadian-French co-production filmed in the Rocky Mountains. She stayed on when she fell in love with a crew guy who invited her to live on his sailboat in Vancouver. The boat and the guy are long gone, but Prudhomme's career flourished as the B.C. industry grew.

She turned actor Tim Curry into a homicidal daemon clown for the 1990 Stephen King miniseries It, and she gave Eugene Levy's dog-loving character two left feet for writer-director Christopher Guest's Best In Show.

The best-picture nominee Juno, with director Jason Reitman in 2007, had as one of its more memorable images the yellow running shorts sported by Cera as the high-schooler who impregnates Ellen Page's title character. The movie's production designer had come up with a gold and burgundy colour scheme for the story's fictional school.

"From there, we thought the yellow shorts would be hilarious," Prudhomme says. "We found some yellow shorts, tried them on and Jason kept saying 'shorter, shorter.' Michael Cera said 'Are you sure?'"

That experience across genres and eras came to a head on Parnassus, with its magpie mix of clothing scraps and trinkets spanning centuries. She scoured London secondhand stores and exotic shops. "I felt that I truly got the movie -- in my head that movie made total sense. Terry connected to the feeling I had and the imagery that I was presenting him."

The movie is also nominated for its production design, a team drawn from Toronto and London. People nominated for awards will often say it was a team effort, but if Prudhomme takes the Oscar March 7, you sense that her thanks won't be just lip service.

"The movie was the work of a lifetime," she says. "A shameless mix of exoticism, Gypsy and period. We put them together and composed, with very willing actors. Terry kept saying 'Keep me interested, what are you bringing.' His ideas got us here, and we all jumped on the wagon."

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