Laurence Fox leans back in his chair and blows a tremulous smoke ring.
Apparently being interviewed makes him edgy, so he’s asked to talk in his
dressing room at the Theatre Royal in Windsor because it’s the only place he
can smoke. Fox’s fidgeting might betray nerves, but his theatrical command
of a cigarette and baritone drawl, so deep that the bass almost makes your
teeth chatter, lend him an air of self-assurance.
The hotly tipped 28-year-old son of the big-screen veteran James Fox has every
reason to be confident. When he first appeared as DS James Hathaway,
sidekick to Lewis (played by Kevin Whately), in the spin-off from Inspector
Morse, not only was it the most watched drama of 2006 but he was widely
considered to have upstaged Whately. “I think some critics only said I
upstaged Kev because I hardly had any lines in the first episode,” Fox says
modestly. “It’s quite easy when you don’t have much to say. People wonder,
‘What’s he thinking?’ Kevin drives the programme and you have to be very
experienced and charismatic to do that. He’s the English Harrison Ford to
me.”
Three new feature-length episodes of Lewis capitalise, sometimes
overzealously, on many of Morse’s signature ingredients, and references to
Morse himself abound. Cue the dreaming spires of Oxford (“The drama wouldn’t
work so well in Walthamstow,” says Fox), cerebral references that replace
Morse’s taste for Wagner with Greek mythology, and a combustible dynamic
between the pragmatic everyman Lewis, and the enigmatic trainee priest
turned policeman Hathaway. “Morse was meaner to Lewis than Lewis is to
Hathaway,” says Fox, “but they are definitely ready to smack each other in
the chops at some point. They disagree a lot because Lewis has a grasp of
the real world and Hathaway has a more black and white moral stance. Police
investigations are pretty stressful — even acting in one can be quite
full-on when you are in a real morgue and they haven’t cleared the fridges.”
The first episode revolves around a murder in a group of friends who belong to
a Dionysian cult called the Sons of the Twice Born, for which Hathaway’s
knowledge of Greek gods and slightly aloof public school demeanour come in
handy. It’s thelatest in a string of stiff upper-lipped characters for Fox.
He was in Gosford Park, played Captain Tom Willis in Colditz
and received glowing reviews for his mannerism-perfect portrayal of the
Prince of Wales in the ITV drama Whatever Love Means. Asked whether
he has poshness in common with these characters, Fox sets the “toff” bar
higher than the fees at his alma mater Harrow, replying, “I’m not posh, I
just went to a posh school, I don’t have an estate or a title. We are only
the second generation of our family that went to Harrow.”
Despite belonging to an acting dynasty — as well as being James Fox’s son he
is Edward Fox’s nephew, Emilia Fox’s cousin, and his sister Lydia Fox is
also an actress — hesays he didn’t have an overtly starry childhood.
However, most kids probably didn’t have Ted Danson coming round for dinner,
Dustin Hoffman in the back of the family Mercedes or visit a restaurant in
Italy where there was a charmingly inaccurate sign saying “We welcome the
great British actor John Fox”. James Fox temporarily quit acting at the
height of his fame and joined a Christian missionary group, but Laurence
says his dad’s religion was never oppressive. “It manifests itself in his
love for his family,” he explains.
He is refreshingly philosophical about the helping hand his famous surname may
have given him, saying: “Yes, it probably helped — it’s a combination of
timing, luck and contacts.” Not forgetting arresting talent, and training.
After working as a gardener, then in an office, which hehated, Fox decided
to become an actor, went to RADA and got his first job in The Hole
while he was still studying. He says that his dad “never pushed us in any
direction — he takes the acting profession with a pinch of salt. His advice
tends to be practical stuff like ‘Stop mumbling’.”
Fox is clearly incredibly close to his family, and to his father in
particular, whom he describes as “much better-looking than me, a truly
handsome man”. He was once turned down to play his father’s son, and the
physical resemblance isn’t immediately obvious. Fox junior’s features have a
lean, aristocratic awkwardness, like expensive silverware that has been laid
slightly out of place on a table. Combine his gangly charmwith a quick sense
of humour, however, and it’s not to hard to see what attracted Billie Piper,
with whom he has recently been romantically linked. The pair are appearing
together in the play Treats, in which they are embroiled in a love
triangle with a character played by Kris Marshall. Fox reportedly split up
with his long-term girlfriend for Piper, and the mention of her name makes
him fidget like one of Hathaway’s suspects under questioning. Perhaps this
is why he was nervous. Asked what it’s like to work with someone you are
dating, he jokes: “There is no truth in the rumour that Kris Marshall and I
are going out.”
As the atmosphere in the room becomes more thick with embarrassment than it is
with cigarette smoke, he explains blushingly: “It’s something that’s private
to me. I just don’t feel comfortable talking about it. I don’t see what my
love life has to dowith my career.” He will diplomatically sing Piper’s
praises, however: “Billie is quite unflappable, she’s lovely, and works
harder than both us boys put together.
“It sounds like a condescending thing to say but I think she’s brave to do a
play. She puts a lot of time and effort into it but she is also a laugh.
“She’s on the money. She’s fun.” Fox might take his privacy seriously, a trait
he says he has in common with the “secretive” Hathaway, but when it comes to
acting he has a more cavalier attitude. Although his career is clearly
taking off, with parts in two major films coming up — Becoming
Jane, about Jane Austen, and The Golden Age with Cate Blanchett,
he says his choice of roles is as likely to be influenced by how much fun he
could have playing them, as what it would do for his profile. Lewis
may have reached record audiences, but he also got to perform stuntssuch as
hanging James Wilby out of a window. He adds: “I don’t tend to hang around
actors who take it all too seriously — it’s boring listening to a group of
actors talking about their craft.”
He prefers to work on instinct rather than go in for painstaking research, and
apart from learning a bit about police procedure he hadn’t planned on
gaining any first-hand experience of the law. That was until one night,
while filming Lewis, he found himself on the wrong side of it after
he was caught “peeing against a wall — which didn’t go down well with
anybody”. He explains: “I went round the back of a building and suddenly
neeeee nawww, neeeeee, nawww, I hear this police car. I just apologised
profusely to the officer. I thought about flashing my fake badge but that
would have been really, really stupid.” Inspector Morse would never have
stood for it.
Lewis, Sun, ITV1, 9pm
