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I first saw James Fox on the big screen when I was six. There he was – tall, blonde and with those boyish good looks – the inevitable winner of the London-Paris air race in “Those Magnificent men in their Flying Machines.”

An extremely talented actor, he possessed the uncanny ability to brilliantly portray young men of various backgrounds wrestling with their sexual identity and social class. Even as the swinging 60s were still taking shape, he appeared to be everywhere, acting alongside some of the great names of the decade, like Dirk Bogarde and Mick Jagger.

To many it seemed he might be one of the victims of the showbiz explosion. In his early thirties he suffered a type of breakdown, gave up acting completely, found religion, and took himself off to be a door-to-door salesman in Yorkshire. After a decade away from the limelight, Fox would return from his celluloid sabbatical to appear in several high profile movies.

Over the last three decades, he’s shown that he’s still capable of taking on complex roles in films that examine sexual identity and class structure. Some interesting examples of this include his role as the gay British spy Anthony Blunt in “A Question of Attribution” (1992) and his role as the British aristocrat Lord Darlington in “The Remains of the Day” (1993). More recently, he has appeared in high profile television series like “Merlin” and “Downton Abbey,” remaining an important central figure in an acting dynasty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKpaOB9ektc