Emilia Fox says she has not watched her early acting role in the TV series Pride And Prejudice in the three decades since it first aired.
The English actress played dashing and arrogant Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy’s (Colin Firth) shy sister Georgiana Darcy in the popular 1995 BBC period drama, based on Jane Austen’s novel of the same name, before rising to prominence in Oscar-winning film The Pianist and crime drama Silent Witness.
Fox told Kate Thornton’s White Wine Question Time podcast that she had a “tiny, weeny, weeny part in it” as Georgiana, who makes friends with the main character Elizabeth Bennet (Jennifer Ehle), and is nearly tricked into a relationship with the blowhard Mr George Wickham (Adrian Lukis) in the Regency-set period drama.
She added: “Everyone else was amazing in it, but I was at university, so I’ve never even seen it. I didn’t see it then and I haven’t seen it now.”
Fox, 50, also said she has “to watch it”.
She also spoke about finding a new relationship with her TV producer partner Jonathan Stadlen, and comparing their parenting styles.
Fox says her and daughter Rose, 14, have been “muddling along our own way for a long, long time”, and it has been “really fascinating” to learn how Stadlen approaches it.
“I also think you know that falling in love again, that there is a sort of bravery in that because it’s a huge risk,” she also said.
“There was a great sense of safety in being just with Rose, knowing what she was like, she knew what I was like, and we’ve got our own rhythm.
“And then suddenly you’re falling in love with someone, introducing them into your family life and us into his family life, and then not knowing whether it will work. And it’s a very different time in life, isn’t it, to when you’re in your 20s and having relationships like that and 30s, and then it’s significantly different once you’re, for me, certainly when I’m in my 50s now.”
Fox, known for her role as forensic pathologist Dr Nikki Alexander in BBC TV series Silent Witness, is also a member of the acting Fox dynasty which includes her cousin, the Lewis star Laurence Fox, and Slow Horses star Freddie Fox.
Her father, Edward Fox, starred in the 1970s film The Day Of The Jackal as the assassin in the title – which has been remade into a TV series with Eddie Redmayne in the same role.
Fox said: “I think he’s totally made it his own, hasn’t he? They’re different. But the homages they’ve made to the original film are really lovely. I think it’s a great series.”
She has also been in romantic comedy Cashback, and presented true crime shows such as Channel 4’s In the Footsteps Of Killers.
Fox played the love interest and later friend of Adrien Brody’s character in 2002 war drama The Pianist, which won three Academy Awards including best actor for Brody, best director for Roman Polanski, and adapted screenplay for Ronald Harwood.
