Samantha Fox

This article is about the English model and singer; for the American erotic actress, see Samantha Fox (porn star).

Samantha Karen "Sam" Fox (born 15 April 1966 in Mile End, London) is an English former glamour model and dance-pop singer.

Background

As the eldest daughter of the late Patrick John Fox and Carole Ann Wilken, Samantha Karen Fox came from a family of market traders in the East End of London. She has a younger sister, Vanessa (6 years her junior); and a half-sister, Frederica, from her father's second marriage.

She had a keen interest in the theatre from an early age, and first appeared on a theatre stage at the age of three, and was enrolled in the Anna Scher Theatre School from the age of 5. Her first television appearance came in 1976, at the age of 10, in a BBC play entitled No Way Out. Following on from this, she started at the Judi Dench Mountview Theatre School, near her home in Crouch End, at the age of 11.

Interested in music from an early age, she formed her first band at the age of 14. Her first record deal came a year later, with Lamborghini Records. However, both her theatre and music careers went on hold when her modelling career took off.

Modelling career

In early 1983, 16-year-old Samantha Fox posed in her bedroom, wearing lingerie, while her mother Carole took pictures for The Sunday People newspaper's "Face and Shape of 1983" amateur modelling contest. Fox came joint runner-up in the contest, The Sunday People published her pictures, and a photographer from The Sun newspaper invited her for a professional photoshoot shortly afterwards. On Tuesday, 22 February, 1983, with the full support of her parents, Samantha Fox made her first topless Page Three girl appearance in The Sun. She was still almost two months shy of her 17th birthday.

Fox's bubbly-blonde looks, winning smile, working-class background, and curvaceous 36D breasts, which looked disproportionately large on her diminutive 5 ft 1 in (1.55 m) frame, quickly made her an iconic figure. Months after she started modelling, she famously insured her breasts for a quarter of a million pounds sterling.

Fox went on to win The Sun's "Page Three Girl of the Year" award for three consecutive years (1984, 1985, and 1986), and her popularity helped usher in the 1980s taste for top-heavy Page Three girls: Busty models such as the 36DD Tracy Neve and the 38DD Maria Whittaker achieved considerable success in the wake of Fox's celebrity. Fox also appeared in British soft-porn magazines, although very few full-frontal nude shots were ever published.

Fox announced her retirement from Page Three modelling in 1986, at the age of 20. In 1995, aged 29, she made a one-off appearance in The Sun to promote Page Three's 25th anniversary week. After an overwhelmingly positive reader response, she appeared in the slot every day during the anniversary week, with Friday's final topless picture given away as an A3-sized poster. In 1996, aged 30, she appeared in the October issue of Playboy magazine. These were her final published nude photos.

Fox's father managed her modelling career in the early days, but the two split acrimoniously when she found that he was embezzling her money. Her parents later divorced.

Music career

In the mid-1980s, Fox started a successful singing career, working with notable music producers such as Stock Aitken Waterman and Full Force. Her debut single, "Touch Me (I Want Your Body)", released when she was just 20 years old, made the Top 10 in the U.K. and the United States; it also topped the charts in many countries. It was one of the biggest selling singles of the 1980s in Australia. Her debut live performance came at Peter Stringfellow's club Hippodrome. Fox had three Top 10 hits in both the United States and Britain. In Canada and the U.S., "Naughty Girls (Need Love Too)" and "I Wanna Have Some Fun" made the Top 10; whereas British audiences put "Do Ya Do Ya (Wanna Please Me)" and "Nothing's Gonna Stop Me Now" into the Top 10. Her successful singing career resulted in Fox touring the world, including unusual places such as Bosnia, Russia, Ukraine, and Siberia.

Fox made a comeback in 1991, releasing her fourth and final album for Jive Records, entitled Just One Night. The album didn't garner much attention since it sounded very similar to other popular songs at the time. Fox was keen to move towards a rock-oriented direction, which is evident from such songs as "What You See Is What You Get", "Spirit Of America" and the Rock/Dance single, "Pleasure Zone." The record label, however, wanted a more Dance-pop heavy album like I Wanna Have Some Fun. This led to an inconsistent album. The only singles from the set that flirted with radio airplay were "Another Woman (Too Many People)", "Just One Night", and "Hurt Me! Hurt Me! (But The Pants Stay On)." In 1992, Jive released Samantha's first official compilation, Greatest Hits. It also features songs such as "Even In The Darkest Hour", the Pop-Metal song "Giving Me A Hard Time", and a rock song called "Hot Lovin'".

In 1995, Fox attempted to revive her singing career again by participating in the "Song for Europe", the competition to select the UK's entry for the annual Eurovision Song Contest. She performed Go for the Heart as lead singer of the group Sox, but failed to reach Eurovision after finishing 4th in the public vote. In 1997, she released a new album 21st Century Fox. The album featured Eurodance and Hi-NRG music. The album was released in the US a year later with the lead single "Let Me Be Free". 21st Century Fox became her first indie release. She also co-wrote and produced many of its tracks. Other singles from the album are Deeper and The Reason Is You. This is the album that made her a bigger favourite with her gay fanbase. In November 2005, Fox released her latest album, Angel with an Attitude, in Canada. For the album, she chose to work together with the award-winning producer Joe Barrucco.

In 2004, Fox teamed up with Mats Söderlund (alias Günther) in order to do a remake of Touch Me (I Want Your Body). This version reached #1 on the Swedish Singles Chart.

Fox toured Australia throughout late-August and early-September 2007, as part of the Countdown Spectacular 2. It was the first time ever she'd performed in a live arena-style concert. Songs performed were "Do Ya Do Ya (Wanna Please Me)" and "Touch Me (I Want Your Body)".

Fox's films

Fox's pictures gained her such fandom in India that she was invited to star in a Bollywood film (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0274764/ Rock Dancer). This was written and directed by V. Menon, starring Shammi Kapoor, Kamal Sadanah, Ronit Roy, Sharon Prabhakar, Javed Jaffri, Johnny Lever etc. It also featured guest appearances from Govinda, and was produced by Subbir Mukherjee.

Fox also featured in It’s Been Real written and directed by Steve Varnom, and starring John Altman, and The Match written and directed by Michael Davis, starring Pierce Brosnan, Ian Holm, Tom Sizemore, Neil Morrissey, David Hayman, and Ilar Blair.

On From Under the Cork Tree, Fall Out Boy have a track called "A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More Touch Me" referencing the movie Sixteen Candles and Samantha Fox's album Touch Me.

Other sidelines

In 1986 Fox was featured in a strip poker game (Samantha Fox Strip Poker) for Commodore Amiga, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro, and Amstrad CPC.

In 1989, Fox co-presented the BRIT Awards with Mick Fleetwood, which became notorious for turning into a shambles; Fox has asserted in interviews since that the autocue did not work properly that night, leading to utter chaos during the show's live TV broadcast. She spent a year in New York presenting pop promo videos for MTV, and she made other attempts at TV presenting, including an interview with Rolf Harris, which was ill-fated even before it started as Fox referred to her interviewee as "Ralph" on several occasions. She appeared on the sitcom Charles In Charge in 1990 where she played the role of "Samantha Steele", a fictional rock star whose agent pushes her to romance Charles Scott Baio in order to get the paparazzi to print it in the tabloids. In the story line, it was done for career publicity reasons since people seem to enjoy some controversy. She also appeared in Fort Lauderdale, Florida for Spring Break, where she sang her various then current hits to thousands of college students.

Fox's career went quiet as she grew older and she was not commercially successful in her singing. However, this has not stopped her working. In 2003, she appeared in ("reality television") show The Club, competing against Richard Blackwood and Dean Gaffney by trying to run the most successful bar in The Club, which was full of celebrity guests such as Jordan. In August 2004, Fox was featured in a music video with Swedish music artist Günther in the song "Touch Me" (a remix of her earlier version). The album, Pleasureman, on which this version of "Touch Me" is featured was released in the US on Rhino Records in 2006. The single spent several weeks at #1 on the Swedish Chart.

Personal life

Fox was twice linked to Australian con man Peter Foster. They dated in 1986-87 and then, after a seven year separation, they reunited in 1994 for a year. They were at one time reportedly engaged to be married. Fox described Foster as "the love of my life". She has also been in relationships with Paul Stanley, the singer and rhythm guitarist for the band KISS.

In 1994, it was reported that Fox had become a born-again Christian. That year, she played at the Christian arts festival Greenbelt. When queried about how she could reconcile topless modelling with her Christian beliefs, she said:

Easily. God gave me my body. I know it has made many people happy. There is no conflict there. I don't and have never promoted pornography. I'm not a born-again Christian because I have always been one. I am doing what God wants me to do. My prayer each night is: "Let me go my way and make people happy. Let me do the right thing."

Rumours regarding Fox's sexual preference began to surface in 1999 when she judged a lesbian beauty pageant, and many people said they believed that the woman she lived with at the time, Australian Cris Bonacci, formerly guitarist with Girlschool, was more than just her manager.

In February 2003, she made a statement about her personal life:

But I can't keep saying, "Maybe", or denying it. It's time to let people know where my heart is. People keep trying to say I'm a lesbian. I don't know what I am. All I know is that I'm in love with Myra [Stratton, her manager]. I love her completely and want to spend the rest of my life with her.

Discography

Main article: Samantha Fox discography

Including details and chart positions

• Touch Me (1986)
• Samantha Fox (1987)
• I Wanna Have Some Fun (1988)
• Just One Night (1991)
• Greatest Hits (1992)
• 21st Century Fox (1998)
• Watching You, Watching Me (2002)
• Angel with an Attitude (2005)
• Angel with an Attitude (2007) - Australian re-release with 2 bonus tracks

External links

• Official Website
• Official Fan Club
• Your Sinclair Review of Samantha Fox Strip Poker