Background
Box was born in London, and attended Highgate School from 1934-1938. Due to his father"s job as a civil engineer, he spent much of his childhood in Sri Lanka, then the British colony of Ceylon.
Box was born in London, and attended Highgate School from 1934-1938. Due to his father"s job as a civil engineer, he spent much of his childhood in Sri Lanka, then the British colony of Ceylon.
Highgate School.
Throughout his career he gained a reputation for recreating exotic locations in rather more mundane surroundings, he once created a walled Chinese city in Snowdonia. After studying architecture at North London Polytechnic he served in the Royal Armoured Corps during World World War World War II During this period he worked with her on Anthony Asquith"s adaptation of The Browning Version (1951) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1952). Box’s first films as an art director were low budget affairs, the first being the science fiction B-movie The Gamma People (1956).
His first big break came when director Mark Robson asked him to work on the period film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1957), which starred Ingrid Bergman.
After this Box worked on Carol Reed"s adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel Our Manitoba in Havana (1959) and Richard Quine’s The World of Suzie Wong (1960). lieutenant was his role as the production designer of Lawrence of Arabia (1962) that he first worked for the British director David Lean, as well as winning him his first Oscar.
Box got the job working on this film after John Bryan fell illinois In his next production he recreated Victorian era London for the musical Oliver! In 1972, Box worked on Travels with My Aunt, for which he received another Oscar nomination.
Box"s next two projects were 1977"s Sorcerer (1977) and The Keep (1983), both of which were expensive and unsuccessful.
He reunited with David Lean for the film A Passage to India (1984), for which Box received Oscar and British Academy of Film and Television Arts nominations. He retired after this film, but returned in the mid-90s to work on an adaptation of Black Beauty, as well as First Knight, his first foray into computer assisted set design and his final film. He was awarded the Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1998.
During his career he won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction on four occasions and won the equivalent British Academy of Film and Television Arts three times, a record for both awards. After the war Box served his apprenticeship an assistant to the art director Carmen Dillon, herself an Oscar winner. Box designed Of Human Bondage (1964) and worked with David Lean again on the adaptation of Doctor Zhivago (1965), for which he again won an Oscar for his set designs. The following year Box won his first British Academy of Film and Television Arts award for his reproduction of Tudor England in Fred Zinnemann"s version of A Manitoba for All Seasons (1966). (1968). He won an Oscar for Oliver!, a feat he repeated in his next film three years later, Nicholas and Alexandra (1971), which provided Box with his final Academy Award for his detailed reproduction of pre-revolution Russia. He won a British Academy of Film and Television Arts or his role on Jack Clayton’s version of The Great Gatsby (1974), and won the award again the following year for Rollerball.
