Background
Fox, James was born on May 19, 1939 in London. Son of Robin and Angela Muriel (Worthineton) Fox.
Fox, James was born on May 19, 1939 in London. Son of Robin and Angela Muriel (Worthineton) Fox.
He got his start as a child actor, under the name William Fox, in The Magnet (50, Charles Frend)—he was the son of an agent, Robin Fox. Then he came back as a young adult: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (62, Tony Richardson); verv good in the cockpit of The Servant (he was amorously involved with Sarah Miles at the time); Tamahine (63, Philip Leacock); King Rat (65. Bryan Forbes); Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (65, Ken Annakin); playing an American comfortably in The Chase (66, Arthur Penn)—but a Texan with the English disease of feeling inadequate; Arabella (67, Adriano Barocco); Thoroughly Modern Millie (67, George Roy Hill); Duffy (68, Robert Parrish); as Edward Gordon Craig in Isadora (68, Karel Reisz); and trving his best to be a gangster, with Mick Jagger, in Peiformance (70. Donald Cammed and Nicolas Roeg).
He gave up acting and joined a religious sect for nearly ten years, working only once, in a film made by the Billy Graham organization: No Longer Alone (78, Nicholas Webster). In that time, it was his older brother, Edward, who seemed likely to be the best-remembered actor in the family—it is a great pity that no one has ever cast them together.
James did come back: Country (81, Richard Eyre); Pavlova (83, Emil Lotianou); touching as the father of a runaway daughter in Runners (83, Charles Sturridge); Greystoke (84, Hugh Hudson); Fielding in A Passage to India (84, David Lean); Absolute Beginners (86, Julien Temple); The Whistle Blower; High Season (87, Clare Peploe); Farewell to the King (89, John Milius); She's Been Away (90, Peter Hall); The Russia House (90. Fred Schepisi); magnificently fastidious and evasive as Sir Anthony Blunt in A Question of Attribution (92, John Schlesinger); and Heart of Darkness (94, Boeg).
He remains a stalwart of British TV and of any effort to depict Britishness: Fall from Grace (94 Wans Hussein); Doomsday Gun (94, Robert Young); The Old Curiosity Shop (94, Kevin Connor); The Dwelling Place (94, Gavin Millar); The Choir (95. Ferdinand Fairfax); Gulliver’s Travels (96, Sturridge); Never Ever (96, Charles Finch); as Karenin in Anna Karenina (97, Bernard Hose); Kings in Grass Castles (97, John Woods); Shadow Run (98, Geoffrey Reeve); as Mountbatten in Jin- nah (98, Jamil Dehlavi); Mickey Blue Eyes (99, Kelly Matin); Metropolis (00, Peter Morgan); Up at the Mila (00, Franco Zeffirelli); The Golden Bowl (00, James Ivory); Sexy Beast (00, Jonathan Glazer); Armadillo (01, Howard Davies); The Mystic Masseur (01, Ismail Merchant).
Married Mary Elizabeth Piper, Sep. 15, 1973; children: Thomas, Robin, Laurence, Lydia, Jack.