The Sunday Times, Sunday September 17th 2006

Dressing Hollywood
Bob Ringwood designs costumes for blockbuster films at his Suffolk home.

“There were 76 speaking roles, and I did 9,000 costumes and 18,000 pairs of shoes, and I got an Oscar nomination for it – the only part of the film that was nominated.” 

The highlights of Ringwood’s film career: his work with Tim Burton on Batman and Batman Returns, with Steven Spielberg on Empire of the Sun, with John Boorman on Excalibur and with David Lynch on Dune. 

Born in Pinner, Middlesex, Ringwood studied theatre design at the Central School of Art & Design in London (now Central Saint Martin’s) and worked on many West End productions before settling in Hollywood for 12 years. So what drew him back home, to a quiet village street in Yoxford? “Pure impulse,” confesses Ringwood, 59. “I was working on Alien: Resurrection about nine years ago, when I had to fly into London for a meeting. I wangled a weekend with friends in the country and saw the house for sale as I drove past.”  The next thing Ringwood knew he found himself offering slightly more than the asking price for the house – and more, too, for a neighbouring gallery on lease, with the proviso that if he couldn’t snap up the pair of them, he wouldn’t take either property. He got both. “I had arrived on the Friday and by six o’clock on Saturday I’d secured the house and the lease on the gallery, which I later bought,” he says. “To be honest, I was ready for a sabbatical by then. The stress of doing feature films – two a year and sometimes three – was unbelievable.” 

It was perhaps no surprise that Ringwood should fall for this airy, healthy house that was designed and built for a doctor in about 1840. The clean lines and high ceilings greatly appealed to Ringwood, while the
possibility that Charles Dickens might have been a visitor to the consulting room still fascinates him today. “Dickens used to stay at an old coaching inn called the Three Tuns on his way to Yarmouth. It was
literally across the road, and he wrote large sections of Our Mutual Friend there, as well as bits of Great Expectations.”

Ringwood flew back to Hollywood and sold his house for the full asking price. Following his heart rather than his head has worked well for Ringwood over the years. Working on ‘Batman Returns’ in 1991, when
he had to sculpt a rubber catsuit around Michelle Pfeiffer, he bought a house in Hollywood’s Whitley Heights that had featured in Robert Altman’s ‘The Long Goodbye’ and later in Kenneth Branagh’s ‘Dead
Again’.  His next move was to a derelict 1927 hacienda-style mansion hanging over Sunset Boulevard, which he resurrected. Work generated enough profit for him to buy and restore a 1908 wooden clapboard house in the tree-lined avenues of Spaulding Square, Los Angeles. That, too, had to go when Barnsdale claimed his affections. 

With plenty of film work lined up, Ringwood rented a 1905 hunting lodge at Silver Lake, east of Hollywood, while a team of builders stripped his future home in England to its bare bones. They slowly uncovered a
beautiful period house virtually untouched since it was built. There are eight working fireplaces, all with their original grates. Elegant, fully shuttered windows grace the sitting room and the library, and the former doctor’s consulting room is now a cosy study. Off the dining room are two walk-in pantries and, behind the kitchen, a toilet and laundry room. 

Ringwood loves throwing dinner parties at Barnsdale – the larger the better. “The gallery, which connects to the house through the garden, can seat up to 30 people and has a 14ft x 40ft wine cellar,” he says. 
“It was a parish room, then a Methodist chapel, then a girls’ school. I’ve had successful exhibitions there and now it’s a mixture of art and antiques. I’ve recently been seeking out lost and unknown paintings; I’ve
found an 18th-century drawing of Catherine the Great and a previously unknown oil portrait of Gertrude Jekyll.” 

Barnsdale House has four large bedrooms, a dressing room and two bathrooms, but if there’s an overspill of house guests, Ringwood arranges bed and breakfast for them at the local pub. 

His sets and costumes for film, theatre and operatic productions are conceived in a small studio that he has converted from a former stable boys’ lodgings at Barnsdale. Here, a balcony overlooks an Islamic-style walled garden built round a fountain court, with a brick summer house and parkland beyond. 

Ringwood has spent more than £300,000 restoring the house and gallery, but now he’s moving yet again. “It’s simply too big for me,” he says. “The lodge I rented at Silver Lake was the smallest home I’ve ever
lived in, and I was the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.” 

He is now searching for a similar property in the West Country, with direct access to the beach. “I’ve just discovered a whole section of my family who are fishermen in Cornwall, so that’s where I’d like to be.” 
He’s not ready to retire from the film industry just yet, though. “’Troy’ nearly killed me, but now I’ve had my sabbatical, I’m ready to take up more theatre and film design.”

Bob designed the costumes for ‘Le Corsaire’ for English National Ballet in 2014.

“When designing Le Corsaire, I thought it would be nice to bring out romantic and
historical elements. It had originally been staged back in the 1850s and still often when
you see it done by other companies it looks a bit comic, with a pantomime feel.”

“I thought that if we went back to the period it was set and all the designs were drawn from
paintings and drawings from that period, it would instil the production with the essence of that
period, rather than just make it modern. It’s an exotic world of the past – a jewel box, a scented,
decorated, rich world.“

“I was also keen to bring out the romance, in particular the perfumed, Arabian Night element,
which is not always there in other productions.”

“I felt inspired from illustrations by Léon Bakst (Schéhérazade, L’apres- midi d’un faune) and
Edmund Dulac mixed-in with a touch of Hollywood Eastern essence such as in the designs from the great
Technicolour movie era in releases such as The Thief of Bagdad, Kismet and of course The King and I, which was always one of my particular favourites!”

www.ballet.org.uk/blog-detail/bob-ringwood-designing-le-corsaire