K.C. Fox
Before Hollywood
- Born
- February 1, 1954, Los Angeles. A child of LA — both parents Bob and Barbara Scheibel were educators.
- High school
- Granada Hills Charter HS, San Fernando Valley (Class of ~1972) — strongly inferred from family geography; awaiting direct confirmation from her brother Dean.
- Childhood adventure
- The Scheibel family took a year-long European campervan sabbatical when K.C. was a kid — an early lesson in living inside a designed space.
- Pre-film jobs
- Card dealer · ski instructor · cocktail server · stained-glass apprentice · tour-wholesaler representative in England (where a friend introduction got her into film).
- Brothers
- Dean Scheibel — Professor of Communication Studies, Loyola Marymount University (LA), 28+ years on faculty; bassist in the "Back Pages" cover band. Ian Scheibel.
- Married
- Bob Fox on April 1, 1984. Son Dylan Fox. (Eventually divorced.)
- End-of-life
- Goddaughter Natalia and her husband moved in with K.C. and supported her through chemotherapy; she hosted an "Awake Wake" that hundreds of friends flew in for from across the world.
Sources: LA Times / Legacy obit · Deadline obit · LMU faculty page for Dean Scheibel.
Career
- Started
- 1980 — wardrobe on Take This Job and Shove It; transitioned via art-department coordinator under James Cameron in the early 1980s.
- Union
- IATSE Local 44 · Set Decorator Steering Committee for decades · 12-year wait for union entry.
- Education
- B.A. Commercial Recreation & Tourism, CSUN.
- Last show
- Criminal Minds — 7 seasons, 130+ episodes (2013–2020).
- SDSA
- One of the 15 founding members (1993). Lifetime Achievement recipient, 2024.
- Production designer partners
- Donald Graham Burt · Jackson De Govia · Jon Hutman · Greg J. Grande / Michael Wylie · Richard Bridgland · Nina Ruscio.
- Memberships
- SDSA · AMPAS · Television Academy · IATSE Local 44.
- In Memoriam recognition
- 97th Academy Awards (March 2, 2025) · 76th Creative Arts Emmy Awards (Sept 8, 2024).
Are her sources credited in the films? (the honest answer)
K.C. herself was always credited — every film's end-credit roll has a line that reads "Set Decoration by K.C. Fox" (or, for the few where she was production designer, "Production Design by K.C. Fox"). That's contractually guaranteed by IATSE Local 44.
Her sources — almost never. The prop houses, antique dealers, fabricators, and individual stores she pulled from are not in main film credits. A handful of films include a "Special Thanks" section at the very end of the roll that names key suppliers (often History for Hire, The Earl Hays Press, Picture Cars West for vehicle features) — but it's courtesy, not contractual, and never piece-by-piece.
Where the source-to-piece mapping lives:
- SDSA Set Decor Magazine — the trade-press features that go behind the scenes on award nominees.
- Architectural Digest "On Set" features — typically named pieces from named stores for the marquee productions.
- Variety Artisans + Hollywood Reporter Behind the Scenes — interview-driven, often quote the decorator naming favored vendors.
- The decorator's own portfolio site — when they kept one. K.C. didn't have a public portfolio site we can find.
- Behind-the-scenes books — production design coffee-table editions sometimes name pieces.
That's why thesetdecorator.com is being built — to back-trace store → piece → film from those trade-press citations, since the films themselves won't tell you.
Filmography & source-research status
33+ titles spanning four decades. Per-film sources fill in as the research surfaces them — published interviews, AD/Variety/SDSA features, decorator-roster traces. Click any film row with a documented mapping to see the pieces and stores.
| Year | Title | Role | Sources documented |
|---|---|---|---|
| loading… | |||
Crew honors — 5 of K.C.'s collaborators have been nominated
20 nominations · 8 wins across 1 award bodies (Oscars, BAFTA, ADG, Emmy, SDSA, Critics' Choice, Saturn, David di Donatello, Canadian Screen, Satellite, European Film, Goya, César, BIFA). Sorted by wins. Click any name for their full record.
Obituaries & verified sources
In Memoriam donations directed to Big Sunday, Planned Parenthood, and PANCAN per family request.
Survived by
Son Dylan Fox (Emma Stone — namesake, not the actress).
Brother Dean Scheibel (Susie McDaniel).
Brother Ian Scheibel (Margo Beylen).
Preceded in death by parents Bob and Barbara Scheibel.
Criminal Minds — the tenure split
K.C. did not decorate the full 15-season run. Annie O’Sullivan-Pittman handled Seasons 7–8 (Sept 2011 → May 2013, ~48 episodes, S7E1 “It Takes a Village” through S8E24 “The Replicator”). K.C. inherited the chair at S9E1 “The Inspiration” (Sept 2013) and held it through the series finale in February 2020 — Seasons 9–15, ~130 episodes.
Source: shotonwhat.com + IMDb Criminal Minds full credits.
The 22-year Matt Callahan arc
K.C. hired Matt Callahan as her assistant on Bowfinger (1999), kept him on Legally Blonde 2 (2003) — where she described him in her SDSA Spotlight as “amazing help… troopers of the first degree” — and then decorated the Shameless pilot (2011) before handing him the show. He went on to decorate all 11 seasons / 121 episodes of Shameless through 2021.
A clean mentor → ASD → series-regular handoff, spanning more than two decades. The strongest single-collaborator thread in K.C.’s body of work.
Beyond the obituary
Drawn from K.C.’s SDSA Spotlight Q&A, the Deadline and Variety obituaries, the LA Times / Legacy obit, and Wikipedia — context that doesn’t fit a credit list:
- First art-department job was at Roger Corman Studios in Venice, CA — career began in B-movie production.
- Transitioned from art-department coordinator under then-PD James Cameron to set decorator on teen films in the 1980s.
- Spent 12 years doing non-union work — commercials, music videos, movies-of-the-week — before getting into IATSE Local 44.
- First film credit (1981) was Take This Job and Shove It — entered the industry via wardrobe, not art dept, on the strength of her seamstress skills.
- Pre-film jobs: card dealer, ski instructor, cocktail server, and stained-glass apprentice.
- Got into film via a friend introduction while working in England as a tour-wholesaler representative.
- Decades-long member of the IATSE Local 44 Set Decorator Steering Committee.
- Mentored formally through the AMPAS mentorship program.
- The 2024 Earl Cooperman Lifetime Achievement Award she received from SDSA is funded by an annual bequest from EC Prop Rentals.
- Featured multiple times in Architectural Digest for her set work.
- Named at the 97th Academy Awards (2025) In Memoriam segment.
- Around her diagnosis, hosted an “Awake Wake” that hundreds of friends flew in for from across the world.
- Patron extraordinaire of Wonderland Elementary’s Art Cadre program in the Hollywood Hills.
- Travel anchors: hiking Death Valley, canoeing Sumatra, Edinburgh and Prague Fringe Festival trips with son Dylan, Oaxaca for Noche de Rábanos.
- Personal art practice: stained glass, oil painting, and mosaics — gifted to family and friends.
Sources: SDSA Spotlight Q&A · Deadline · LA Times / Legacy · IMDb mini-bio · Wikipedia.