she was helping design and organize Eames museum exhibits. Eames made more than 100 small personal and educational films in that time and, as a result of her exposure to them, Oppewall said she got into the film business "by accident." Film career Oppewall began her film career helping Paul Schrader on his 1979 film Hardcore, for which she was credited as a "project consultant." Oppewall and Schrader were divorced sometime after the film's release. She began her career as a set and production designer in the early 1980s, with such films as the 1981 Brian De Palma thriller Blow Out. Oppewall was responsible for overseeing the finding of locations for her films and the design and construction of sets and interiors; according to a profile in The New York Times, she was "responsible for everything an actor walks in front of, sits on, drives through or picks up." One of her earlier movies was Tender Mercies, a 1983 film about an alcoholic country singer played by Robert Duvall. Director Bruce Beresford praised Oppewall as "absolutely brilliant," especially for her attention to very small details, "going from the curtains to the color of the quilts on the floors." A large portion of the movie was filmed in the home of Duvall's character, which Beresford created from an old house that had been sitting abandoned by a highway in Waxahachie, Texas, where the majority of the movie was filmed. Oppewall said of her career, "What I do for a living is not dissimilar from what an actor does. I have a different set of tools, but it's the same process. The reason that it's fun to design sets is that it allows you to try on personalities that you'd never otherwise experience." Gary Ross, director of Pleasantville and Seabiscuit, said of Oppewall, "Jeannine doesn't suffer fools gladly, and she hasn't suffered me gladly when I've been a fool. She's fastidious, restrained and refined, and yet she has this impulsive side where she just takes off and chases butterflies." Gary Hoblit, who directed the 1996 Oppewall-designed film Primal Fear, said he particularly appreciated her flexibility and versatility: "While she may prefer a world in which less is more, she can still create an opulent and gooey world that is appropriate for someone unlike her." Part of the set for Seabiscuit was set in Tijuana during the Prohibition era, Oppewall and her staff