Roy Oxley (9 March 1905 – 1980)[ citation needed] was a production designer at BBC Television who became famous after the BBC chose him to model for a photograph to be shown during their adaptation of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Oxley began working in set design in 1948, as an art decorator in the film London Belongs to Me.[ citation needed] He also supervised the art decoration of the 1949 film, Passport to Pimlico. [1]
Oxley had been working for some years as set decorator for BBC when he was chosen, as an in-house joke, to model for the character of " Big Brother" in Nineteen Eighty-Four. [2] [3] [4] "Big Brother" was not actually a participating character in the programme; his face was only shown on various posters and billboards seen during the adaptation.
Oxley worked at several other productions as a production designer with the BBC, including seven episodes of the Douglas Wilmer version of Sherlock Holmes, various episodes of Z-Cars[ citation needed] and an adaptation for television of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood. [5] In 1969, he won a BAFTA Award for Production Design for his work of the BBC play The Portrait of a Lady. [6]
He was married to Jean; they had two children. [4]