[5] The twin brothers were born to Arthur Boulting and his wife Rosetta (Rose) née Bennett in Bray, Berkshire, England, on 21 December[2] 1913.

Their elder brother Sydney Boulting became an actor and stage producer as Peter Cotes; he was the original director of The Mousetrap.

[2] As a teenager, Roy emigrated to Canada,[6] working for a while as a shop assistant, but also writing dialogue for at least one Canadian film.

[7][8][9] The money he made on his passage home went to finance the brothers' first work, a short entitled Ripe Earth (1938),[10] about the village of Thaxted, Essex, narrated by Leo Genn.

They were socialists, as John demonstrated with his involvement in the Spanish Civil War (see above), and wanted all film, including comedies, to reflect the real world.

In 1937, they set up Charter Film Productions and made several short features, including The Landlady (1937) and Consider Your Verdict (1938), which attracted critical and commercial attention.

Being eager to speak out against the Third Reich, the brothers made their film, Pastor Hall (1940), a biopic of Martin Niemöller, a German preacher who refused to kowtow to the Nazis.

[22][23] They followed up with Thunder Rock (1942) with Michael Redgrave, a passionate anti-isolationist allegory distinguished by imaginative cinematography and a theatrical but highly atmospheric lighthouse setting.

In 1941, Roy joined the Army Film Unit, where he was responsible for Desert Victory, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1944.

John joined the RAF Film Unit, where he made Journey Together in 1945, a dramatised documentary about the training and combat experience of a bomber crew with Richard Attenborough in the lead part.

John directed The Magic Box (1951), a biopic of William Friese-Greene and a film containing numerous cameo appearances.

Roy received an offer to direct a World War Two naval film, Sailor of the King (1953), starring Jeffrey Hunter for 20th Century Fox.

Seagulls Over Sorrento (1954) was another war naval story financed by a Hollywood studio (in this case MGM) with an imported star (Gene Kelly); it was not a big success.

The brothers collaborated on a comedy, Josephine and Men (1955) then Roy was hired by United Artists to do an action film with Hollywood stars, Run for the Sun (1956).

[29] The sequence began with John's Private's Progress (1956), a look at army life, starring Attenborough, Terry-Thomas and Ian Carmichael and co written by Frank Harvey.

[33] Rotten to the Core (1965) was a heist comedy which attempted to make a star of Anton Rodgers in a Peter Sellers-type role, playing multiple parts.

The Boultings directed and produced the northern comedy The Family Way (1966), starring John Mills and his teenage daughter Hayley.

[35] When the National Film Theatre mounted its biggest retrospective to date of British cinema in the late 1980s, Roy who launched it, introduced Desert Victory.

[2][39] With his first wife, Veronica, daughter of Irish barrister, John Craig Nelson Davidson,[40] he had sons Norris (b.

[45] John's grandson, Jordan Stephens (son of Emma), is one half of British hip hop duo Rizzle Kicks.

In 1971, Roy married, for the fourth time, Hayley Mills, 33 years his junior, whom he had met on the set of The Family Way.