On The Road: Edward Fox
Actor Edward Fox tells Louise Flind he’s always glad to be in England
Anything you can’t leave home without? Certainly the books one wants to read, and maybe two or three CDS – Chopin waltzes, Beethoven sonatas, Schubert…
Something you really miss? England.
Do you travel light? I wish I did.
Favourite destination? Many abroad and even more here – Yorkshire Dales, Scottish Lowlands, most of Wessex, no cities, no towns; villages – yes. Abroad: the deep French countryside, Italian cities, Florence, Venice, not Rome. I’ve explored a tiny amount of Rome and it’s like having a huge rich cake – you could spend your whole life exploring Rome. I’m not that adventurous, to tell you the truth.
Earliest childhood holiday memories? Cornwall – Fowey. After the war, my father often took us in a hired motorboat and almost always the engine stopped just as we were beyond the harbour wall, at which point my mother would have hysterics. Looking back, that’s quite a fond memory. He did know what he was doing but he wasn’t a wet bob, my Papa.
Where did you go for your own family holidays? England usually. Abroad, we had lovely holidays with the conductor Georg Solti and his wife, Valerie, in their house in Tuscany. He used to teach the children how to play bridge – he was wonderful with children. He also taught my son, Freddie, to conduct – he said, ‘I will teach you 3/4 time; 6/8 is more difficult.’
Are you a traveller? Not really. There’s so much you want to do within a short space, and I think I am a cracking bore, not going here and there. Then I think, ‘No!’ Hamlet says, ‘I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space’, which is the truth if you have enough mental acuity.
Did you do a lot of theatrical touring? I’ll never do it again. It used to have an allure and a charm and was certainly a necessity. And it’s now as boring as hell. Part of that is age – I’ve done it.
Do you learn lines on a plane/train? No. I have to say lines in order to work them. At the Soltis’ house, there was an evening when Mrs Thatcher was there, and she said, ‘Tell me, Mr Fox, do you have a study to do your work in?’ I said, ‘Funnily enough, my study is the street or a field.’ She couldn’t understand. Doing what actors do, nobody else can possibly understand – it’s something that’s totally stupid to do but difficult. Fred Astaire said, ‘If it doesn’t look easy, we haven’t worked hard enough’.
Do you go on holiday? No. If you have sporadic work like we do, you don’t need to.
Do you have a go at the local language? I did modern languages at Harrow and have forgotten every word.
Do you lie on the beach? No – that’s the most ghastly thing to do.
Hotel or apartment? I think hotel. It has to be really interesting, but not ritzy-pitzy.
Strangest thing you’ve ever eaten? My grandfather used to stay at the Travellers Club in Paris and he took me to lunch there. I ordered shark – it was filthy.
Where did you go on your honeymoons? I don’t think we did my first time [he was first married to the actress Tracy Reed] because I was working; I was 21. I think Joanna [David] and I probably went somewhere in Somerset.
Favourite international food? Certainly cut America out… I think probably French cuisine at its best.
Best experience in restaurants when abroad? Aged about 18, just after RADA, I was in a restaurant in Florence on an exchange with a theatre student. I asked for the bill for the spaghetti bolognese and this man comes up and says, ‘You’re English – you’re welcome in our country. I will pay your bill.’ And I say, ‘That’s very kind of you but you don’t need to.’ And he says, ‘No, no, no.’ Then the bill arrived; so I thought, ‘Oh good, he hasn’t paid for it.’ Then another Italian said, ‘They are from Venice – they’re absolute swines. I will pay for your bill.’ I ended up paying. As Orson Welles said, ‘Italians are a nation of actors, the worst of whom are on the stage.’
What is the strangest place you’ve ever slept in – while being away? Filming in India for ‘Gandhi’, I went to bed in a darkened room in New Delhi and thought, ‘Funny – there seem to be things all over the floor.’ I thought no more about it because I’d just arrived off a plane and had to film difficult stuff the following morning and had to sleep. I later woke up and the floor was covered in cockroaches.
Do you like coming home? Yes, I do. I’m always pleased to see hedgerows underneath the wheels and those hideous Middlesex houses.