Her career in production design blossomed in the 1980s and 1990s as she worked on numerous films for several directors—including Alan Parker, James L. Brooks, Jonathan Demme and Martin Scorsese, across a wide selection of genres, including period, contemporary, drama, and horror.
These include Jonathan Demme's Married to the Mob (1988), in which she designed "wonderfully tacky" sets including a Florida hotel room dominated by "the color turquoise to demonstrate the mob's lavish and cheesy taste in décor",[11][12] Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas (1990), and Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Philadelphia (1993), and Beloved (1998).
For example, the script tersely described the room in which the police officers found their fallen comrades as "a snapshot from hell"; Zea created the look and the contents.
[13] She similarly invented the look of Dr. Lecter's dungeon-like room with its unusual paraphernalia, and Demme used this visual imagery "to pace the film in the absence of words".
[4] Zea's production design for Revolutionary Road (2008), for which she received an Oscar nomination, entailed the dismantling, reconstruction and redecoration of two houses in Darien, Connecticut.
For the home of the Wheelers, Zea put in a different kitchen and used "simple and spare" wall treatments and furnishings to depict the couple's hesitancy to adapt to suburban life.
Zea directed a 1990 music video for Laurie Anderson,[17] and a 1991 half-hour HBO television film, A Domestic Dilemma, produced by Jonathan Demme.
[4] Since 2004,[4] Zea has resided in Valley Cottage, New York, in a home she redecorated with an eclectic selection of items, including props from The Silence of the Lambs, Sleepers, and The Departed.
[1] A Tree a Rock A Cloud (2017) Television Production Design Credits: Wonderland (2000) The Leftovers (2014) American Odyssey (2015) New Amsterdam (NBC Universal) (2018-2020) Sources:[4][7][22][20]