Freddie Fox
‘I’ve been drawn to playing gay roles’
Between Dennis The Menace retakes in a Soho recording booth, Freddie Fox is letting off steam by telling a joke so scatological that I couldn’t possibly repeat it here. It’s certainly much too filthy and adult for that rascally schoolboy Dennis, though not too rude for other characters that this young actor has played.
Afterwards, a muscly, white T-shirted Freddie sprawls on a stool for our interview before grabbing his suitcase to fly off to France that night to direct a short film that he has written, starring James Norton, Charles Dance and Jessica Brown Findlay – fulfilling a long-held ambition to make films as well as star in them. It’s an almost lunatic schedule these days for ambitious young actors/auteurs, and you have to hand it to Freddie: the 28-year-old “baby” of that famous thespian family of Foxes (father Edward, sister Emilia, uncle James, cousins Jack and Laurence) is doing all he can to subvert the straitjacket of his “pretty boy” good looks.
Take the menacing Dennis for a start, an imp of mischief who fits in perfectly with the kind of outlaw roles that Freddie favours. “I identify with his rebellious, proto-punk spirit,” he says of the timeless cartoon character that first appeared in The Beano comic back in 1951. “I used to read The Beano all the time when Mum (actress Joanna David) would take me after school to a wonderful Greek Cypriot barbershop called Andy’s in Swiss Cottage. This is the coolest part I’ve played, as far as my friends are concerned.” As for his inner punk? He laughs: “I think we could all do with a little bit more of that cultural anti-establishment backlash now – visually and aesthetically as well as politically.”
Being provocative has certainly become something of a calling card for Freddie, named after Fred Zinnemann – who directed his father in 1973’s The Day of the Jackal. After growing up in London’s Little Venice and then Kimmeridge Bay in Dorset, where his parents live for much of the year, he boarded at Bryanston (where he was “quite a goody-twoshoes”) before going to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, which he says made him feel he could be “a little bit freer”.
His TV breakthrough came as Boy George’s cross-dressing singer friend Marilyn in the 2010 drama Worried About the Boy. He then rocked the floppy-haired, patrician bad-boy look in 2014’s The Riot Club before transforming into Freddie Baxter, the outré bisexual Mancunian tease with a ripped body and damaged background, in Russell T Davies’s two priapically titled series, Banana and Cucumber.
Those were very adult roles, of course, which is why he says he leapt at the chance to play the lead in BBC TV’S new 3D animated version of Dennis And Gnasher: Unleashed. Not only was he “thrilled” at landing his first CGI job, but it was also something that his niece, his sister Emilia’s little daughter Rose, could finally watch him in. Freddie adores her company so much that Rose, he reveals, has made him newly broody for fatherhood.
“I’ve been an uncle for nearly seven years and Dennis is the first thing I’ve done that Rose can watch. I love being around her so much and get such energy from her that I feel I would like my own family one day; I think about it a lot,” he confides. “Is there a [right]
‘I’ve been an uncle for seven years and this is the first thing my niece can watch’
time? It will just happen when it happens.”
Whether he has anyone in mind to start a family with, he’s not saying. When I last interviewed him in January 2012, Freddie declared he was “in love, very much so” with his girlfriend and The Mystery Of Edwin Drood co-star, Tamzin Merchant, and that they hoped to buy a place together; yet that romance with Tamzin ended the following year because, it was suggested, he was too focused on work.
In 2015, he was (wrongly) romantically linked with Prince Harry’s ex Cressida Bonas; and, while promoting Cucumber the same year, he seemingly subscribed to sexual fluidity when he told The Daily Telegraph: “I’ve had girlfriends, but I wouldn’t wish to say ‘I am this or that’ because at some time in my life I might fall in love with a man.”
The remark sent speculation into overdrive – with one commentator accusing him of “playing gay” to generate more interest in him as an actor, a sort of canny career move.
Of course, it could also be argued that Britons from acting dynasties can afford to invite speculation where others may not dare to tread; and since making the statement, Freddie has refused to make further comment.
Was he, I wonder, speculating for real or was it just an extension of the character he was playing at the time? “My life at the time [of shooting it] is my own business,” he says firmly. Famously, to get into the part, Freddie did everything he could to become “the most believable object of desire”; that included eating all the right things, training hard for six months and doing yoga to achieve the 28in waist and sexual self-confidence demanded by the role.
“The actual living of who Freddie Baxter was, I suppose, the most immersive experience I’ve had,” he admits. “Through having had more experience now, I probably wouldn’t say that I would need to go that far again, but I’m very glad of that experience.”
Despite having played other high-profile gay-outlaw roles – the other two being Bosie in the David Hare play The Judas Kiss and Jeff Cole in the 2014 film Pride – however, he’s confident enough not to worry about being typecast; indeed, by contrast he made a notable impression two years running when playing Romeo in Sheffield in 2015 and again in a West End production last year, as well as playing Tristan Tzara in a revival of Tom Stoppard’s 1974 play Travesties.
“I was drawn to gay parts because of their scripts, what the roles offered. So often gay characters, particular those portrayed in an era where gayness was something of a taboo and a statement about ‘who I am and no one’s going to trample me down’, are more colourful and interesting – and for an actor, that’s enticing,” he admits.
However, he still refuses to be drawn on his own personal circumstance. Whether he’s living with anyone, he won’t say – and there are few clues to follow, due to him refusing to use social media for anything personal.
“I think as an actor you’ve got to try to preserve a bit of your mystery so that there’s still an element of surprise about where characters come from. You want to go to the cinema and be in that room with them because you don’t know about them; that’s kind of the whole point, really,” he explains.
He’s just completed two more idiosyncratic film roles: as one of the libertarian preachers known as Ranters during the English Civil War
‘You’ve got to try to preserve a bit of your mystery so there’s an element of surprise’
in Fanny Lye Deliver’d, which co-stars Maxine Peake and Charles Dance. Again, it’s a role he describes as “quite punky” despite a lot of the dialogue being in Middle and Old English. “I thought, ‘My God, I’m never going to be able to learn this,’” says Freddie, who fought hard to conquer dyslexia when he was younger, “but the story is so compelling that the words actually went in very, very quickly.”
He’s also just finished filming a comedy pilot for Channel 4, called
Ye Sweeney.
I still can’t help wondering what his father, now 80 years old, made of the flesh-flashing shenanigans in the taboo-defying Cucumber and Banana, although Edward Fox, I suspect, is more Bohemian than he outwardly appears.
“My parents watched the first couple of episodes, said ‘Well done’ and then got on with their lives. They are always supportive and just happy that I am working,” says Freddie, whose mother, Joanna, started out as a high-kicking, fishnet-stockinged, 16-year-old chorus girl in an end-ofthe-pier show.
Actors really can’t be inhibited, can they? I remark, and Freddie laughs again. “As you can tell.
Lax language in the recording booth…”