Edward Fox

Edward Charles Morrice Fox, OBE (born 13 April 1937) is an English stage, film and television actor. He is generally associated with the role of an upper-class Englishman. He is known particularly for playing the title role in the film The Day of the Jackal (1973) and for his portrayal of Edward VIII in the television miniseries Edward and Mrs Simpson (1978).

Biography

Early life

Fox was born in Chelsea, London, the son of Robin Fox, a theatrical agent, and Angela Muriel Darita Worthington, an actress and writer.^[1] He is the elder brother of actor James Fox and film producer Robert Fox. He is also a paternal half-brother of Daniel Chatto and therefore half-brother-in-law of Lady Sarah Chatto.(Fox and Daniel Chatto's father Thomas Chatto both had bit parts in the 1966 horror film The Frozen Dead.)^[2] His maternal grandfather was the dramatist Frederick Lonsdale. Fox is also the great grandson of industrialist Samson Fox. He was educated at Harrow and served as a Lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards.

Career

Fox's theatre debut was in 1958, and his first film appearance in 1962, as an extra in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Through the sixties he worked mostly on stage, including an acclaimed turn as Hamlet, though he also did modern works. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he established himself with roles in major British films such as Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), Battle of Britain (1969) and The Go-Between (1970), however, it was as the assassin in The Day of the Jackal (1973) that he made his greatest impression. From then onwards, he was much sought after, appearing in such films as A Bridge Too Far (1977) as Brian Horrocks - a role he has cited as a personal favorite.^[3] He also starred in Force 10 From Navarone (1978), with Robert Shaw and Harrison Ford. In 1978 he portrayed King Edward VIII in the television drama, Edward and Mrs Simpson. In the 1982 film Gandhi, Fox portrayed the controversial Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, responsible for the Amritsar Massacre in India. He then appeared as M in the unofficial 1983 James Bond film Never Say Never Again, and then with Laurence Olivier in The Bounty (1984) and Wild Geese II (1985).

More recently, Fox has appeared in The Importance of Being Earnest (2002), Nicolas Nickleby (2002), and Stage Beauty (2004). He has consolidated his reputation with regular appearances on stage in London's West End. He has received particular acclaim for his rendition of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets at major festivals at home and abroad accompanied by the keyboard music of Johann Sebastian Bach performed by Christine Croshaw.

He was made an OBE in 2003.

Personal life

Fox has been married twice, to actresses Tracy Reed (1958-1961) and Joanna David (from July 2004, after a long-standing relationship). He has a daughter, Lucy, Viscountess Gormanston, by Reed, and two children, actress Emilia Fox and Freddie Fox, with David.

Fox joined the Countryside March to support hunting rights in the United Kingdom,^[4] and is a Savilian.

Filmography

• This Sporting Life (1963)
• The Jokers (1967)
• The Long Duel (1967)
• Journey to Midnight (1968)
• Battle of Britain (1969)
• Oh! What a Lovely War (1969)
• The Go-Between (1970)
• A Doll's House (1973)
• The Day of the Jackal (1973)
• The Duellists (1977)
• Soldaat van Oranje (1977)
• A Bridge Too Far (1977)
• Force 10 from Navarone (1978)
• The Cat and the Canary (1979)
• The Mirror Crack'd (1980)
• Gandhi (1982)
• Never Say Never Again (1983)
• The Dresser (1983)
• The Bounty (1984)
• Wild Geese II (1985)
• The Shooting Party (1985)
• Shaka Zulu (1986)
• Robin Hood (1991)
• A Month By the Lake (1996)
• Lost in Space (1998)
• All the Queen's Men (2001)
• Nicholas Nickleby (2002)
• The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)
• Stage Beauty (2004)

Other projects, contributions

• When Love Speaks (2002, EMI Classics) - Shakespeare's "Sonnet 140" ("Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press")

Appearances in popular culture

The post-punk band Smack released the single "Edward Fox" in the early 1980s. The song set a newspaper biography concerning Edward Fox to a musical score. The biography was published in New Manchester Review, and the single was produced by Rowland Jones at Drone Studios in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, owned by the late Paul Roberts.

References

External links

• Edward Fox at the Internet Movie Database