Expelled from Harrow and making mischief ever since
IF HIS appearance on Question Time is his most high-profile controversy to date, it’s only the latest act in Laurence Fox’s career of mischief-making.
The actor, who rose to fame as DS James Hathaway on ITV’s Lewis, has long relished the chance to ruffle feathers.
He claims politically correct culture has smothered diversity of opinion, declaring impishly: ‘I feel compelled to be mean to the wokies.’ He has vowed not to renew his BBC licence fee because he doesn’t want to feel ‘propagandised’.
And he has horrified his bourgeois neighbours by walking around South London wearing a baseball hat with the legend Make America Great Again – Donald Trump’s campaign slogan. Yet this rebelliousness is at odds with the conventional, almost predestined career path he has followed. He grew up as part of the Fox acting dynasty – his grandfather is actor and theatrical agent
Robin Fox, his father is screen veteran James Fox, and cousins Emilia and Freddie are also both in the profession.
But Fox, 41, is no respecter of established reputations. He was expelled from Harrow over an ‘indiscretion’ with a girl at a sixth-form disco, and his combative streak continued at the RADA, where he says he fuelled his unpopularity by being outspoken and defied a working ban by taking on paid acting roles in his final two years.
His initial success came playing rich, idle and drunken young men – he insists they share nothing in common – in the film Gosford Park and on stage in the play Mrs Warren’s Profession. Then there was a nine-year stint on Lewis, which ended in 2015.
More recent work includes roles in ITV’s Victoria, the upcoming Netflix series White Lines, and a stint on Celebrity Gogglebox, in which he appears alongside his cousin Emilia.
He has also enjoyed modest success as a singer-songwriter and recently released his second album, A Grief Observed.
Fox took aim at the family court system in 2018 when he spoke to The Mail on Sunday about the prolonged custody dispute over access to his two children with actress and singer Billie Piper.
The couple, who met after being cast in the play Treats, were granted a divorce after eight years of marriage in
May 2016. But Fox described the custodial process as ‘unnecessarily adversarial’ and said it was weighted against fathers. He has also waded into politics, voting for Jeremy Corbyn – whom he described as Magic Grandpa – in 2017, but more recently decrying him as ‘an antisemitic old Marxist’.
Fox has lambasted the Tories over laws criminalising hate speech, which he says prevent freedom of expression.
Asked in an interview last year what he would bring back to life, he replied: ‘Sensible, rational people.’ Undeterred by the latest criticism, he has fought back against the Question Time furore on Twitter, declaring – with obvious sarcasm – that his worst critics are #stunningandbrave.
‘I should probably say only correct things,’ he once mused, ‘but I have a sneaking suspicion if everybody does that, the world’s going to die of boredom.’
With Fox around, that’s unlikely to happen any time soon.