Samantha Fox first found fame in her native UK as a "Page 3" model in the '80s, but was
far more renowned for a string of suggestive dance-pop hits like "Touch Me (I Want Your
Body)" in the US. She's since seemingly disappeared from view... stateside, at least. Whatever
happened to Samantha Fox?
"I hope to bring you lots of backstage experiences, my experiences…"
Samantha Fox might not have troubled the U.S. charts since 1989, but there's much more to
her discography than her first three albums. In 1991, the music star continued her love
of tracks with parentheses on her fourth studio effort, Just One Night, with lead single "(Hurt
Me! Hurt Me!) But the Pants Stay On" being perhaps the most WTF-worthy.
Six years later, Fox returned to the pop fold with 21st Century Fox, a Eurodance-heavy affair
featuring a cover of lounge pop classic "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps." She embraced her rockier
side on 2005's Angel with an Attitude. Throw in numerous hits collections, remix albums,
guest vocal spots, and covers, and there's been plenty of material for Fox completists
to get their hands on.
The former model initially struggled to make her mark in music, however, telling The Guardian
in 2017:
"At the beginning, many people didn't believe it was me on the record."
Clearly, Fox quickly found her sound and never really slowed down on this side of show business
— even seeing a resurgence in popularity while continuing to tour worldwide in the
2010s. Fox said:
"A lot of young people are into 80s music now. It was an exciting time. The songs always
had a story and the choruses were anthemic."
"Performing live is probably the best part of being a pop star."
The United Kingdom has sent both a Samantha and a Fox to the unashamed campfest that is
the Eurovision Song Contest. Unfortunately, the great British public decided against putting
forward Samantha Fox when she entered the BBC's selection process in the mid-'90s.
Fox was one of several familiar faces to compete in A Song for Europe 1995 as the frontwoman
of pop-rock band, Sox. Londonbeat, the vocal harmony outfit who'd achieved a U.S. number
one smash with "I've Been Thinking About You" four years previously, were also in the mix.
Likewise, Deuce — a pure pop group who'd only just scored a UK Top 20 hit with "Call
It Love" — entered the contest. Yet, it was a group of complete unknowns who ended
up triumphant on the night.
Love City Groove's self-titled hip-pop track received more than 140,000 votes, compared
to the 65,436 that Sox's "Go for the Heart" achieved to place fourth in the competition.
Who knows whether the UK would have done any better if Fox had been its representation
at the contest a few months later: Love City Groove ended up finishing in an underwhelming
10th place... way behind Norway's victory.
Fox first publicly proved she could be a double threat when she took on the role of Charleen
in the forgotten 1987 action comedy Three Kinds of Heat. Three years later, she guest
starred in the final season of Scott Baio's spin-off sitcom Charles in Charge. Since then,
however, her acting career has been rather sporadic, to say the least.
"I'm all over the place, forget it. I'm on cloud nine."
Fox waited until 1999 to take on another onscreen speaking role, appearing as Patsy in The Match,
a low-budget British comedy starring Richard E. Grant, Ian Holm, and a pre-Glitter Max
Beesley. Her next role wouldn't happen for more than a decade, with her performance as
Karen in 7 Cases only arriving in 2015. But the horror movie appeared to have given Fox
the acting bug, as she's since played Ms. Moore in the fifth installment of the deliberately
silly Sharknado franchise and signed up to appear in A Study in Red Trilogy, a miniseries
based on the Jack the Ripper murders.
But Fox's most notable acting credit has been in the 1995 Hindi movie Rock Dancer. The former
model flew in specially from London for a single scene in which she sang and shook a
leg to a track named "Traffic Jam." This brief appearance saw the singer reportedly become
the first Western woman ever to grace a Bollywood film. Fox later shared on Facebook:
"I'm very proud of this, it was such an amazing experience."
KISS guitarist Paul Stanley and Australian career criminal Peter Foster both reportedly
dated Samantha Fox during her rise to fame. By 1999, however, rumors began surfacing that
she was in a relationship with Cris Bonacci, the former Girlschool six-stringer Fox worked
with on her 21st Century Fox album.
Fox didn't comment on the reports at the time, but four years later did admit that she was
in a relationship with another woman, her manager Myra Stratton. In a 2017 interview
with The Guardian, the star explained why she'd felt the need to tell the truth about
her sexuality, saying:
"I was scared to come out. But then I thought: 'I'm not a pinup any more... I can't live
a lie.'"
Fox had previously discussed her fears about revealing all during an appearance on British
daytime chat show Loose Women in 2016, telling the panel she was concerned about what would
happen once the truth got out.
"I've got a lot of male fans...I was scared that I may lose that fan base."
Thankfully for Fox, the public reaction proved to be more positive than she thought, as she
told The Guardian, quote, "It was no big deal."
She's since teamed up with the likes of Sir Ian McKellen as a patron of the Albert Kennedy
Trust, an initiative designed to help those in the LGBTQ+ community who have been disowned
by their families.
Six years after telling the world about her relationship with Stratton, Fox revealed to
OK! magazine that the pair planned to marry in a civil partnership. It sounded like it
would be quite the event, with the star adding that she wanted Motorhead's Lemmy to walk
her down the aisle and Boney M's Liz Mitchell to serve as the officiator. Unfortunately,
the ceremony never came to fruition.
In 2013, Stratton was diagnosed with cancer and tragically lost her battle with the disease
two years later at the age of 60. A heartbroken Fox paid tribute to her long-term partner
on Instagram:
"Bye my baby, no more suffering, I will always love you and [you'll] be forever in my heart"
While appearing on Celebrity Big Brother in 2016, Fox revealed that she'd moved on with
another woman, telling fellow housemate Marnie Simpson:
"I met somebody a couple of months ago and I'm very happy. As you get older life goes
so quick."
"Love is a great thing, and you know, you've got to live life today."
Shortly after, Fox's partner was confirmed to be Linda Olsen, a mother of two from Norway.
By February 2020, the couple had gotten engaged, with reports emerging that they were busy
organizing a summer wedding, which would eventually be postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Sadly, the death of Lemmy in 2015 meant that Fox would have to find somebody new to give
her away.
Fox has almost put the Kardashian-Jenners to shame with the amount of reality TV appearances
she's made since the turn of the century. She first embraced the genre in 2003 with
a memorable appearance on ITV's The Club, a show in which three celebrities manage their
own London bar. Fox lost out to soap opera actor Dean Gaffney in the six-week series,
but still grabbed all the headlines thanks to an outrageous drunken argument with a staff
member, which almost turned physical.
Thankfully, her venture into the Aussie outback on the UK's hugely popular series I'm a Celebrity
... Get Me Out of Here in 2009 went by without any major drama. The same could be said for
2010, when she joined the likes of former America's Next Top Model judge Janice Dickinson
and tabloid playboy Calum Best on the culinary contest Come Dine with Me.
In 2016, Fox bravely entered the 16th season of Celebrity Big Brother, alongside Ariana
Grande's brother Frankie, former Danity Kane vocalist Aubrey O'Day, and Mob Wives star
Renee Graziano. Fox struggled throughout much of her stint in the famous house, and even
had to receive medical attention after suffering a panic attack. She still managed to survive
for 27 days, before being evicted in seventh place.
In 1994, reports emerged that Fox had become a born-again Christian, with her appearance
at the faith-based Greenbelt festival cited as evidence. While speaking with The Age in
2007, however, the ex-model argued that she'd always had strong religious beliefs, saying:
"God gave me my body. I know it has made many people happy. There is no conflict there.
[...] I am doing what God wants me to do."
"I've always believed in God. And I've always been a Christian, and I've always been a very
spiritual person, and my faith is quite strong."
Fox did admit that she started to explore her spirituality a little further around this
period. During a 2003 chat with The Guardian, the singer confirmed she'd once attended the
in-vogue evangelical course dubbed Alpha but realized that its teachings weren't for her,
saying:
"What I learned was I've got my own faith. [...] I felt I didn't need to be there."
Still, the course wasn't entirely without merit. When asked whether it made her feel
conflicted about identifying as gay, Fox replied:
"I think we've come a long way since the Bible was written. [...] I believe in love: at the
end of the day, I think all God wants for us is to be happy and love each other. But
Alpha was good because it helped me find myself a bit. It has taken me a while."
Fox was managed by her father, John Fox, at the height of her career. Unfortunately, he
was reportedly an abusive and controlling man who, writes The Guardian, "increasingly
spent more time drinking and taking cocaine than doing his job."
Ahead of the publication of her 2017 memoir, Forever, Samantha alleged to the Mirror that
she was left with a black eye and fractured ribs after receiving a physical beating at
his hands in 1991. This proved to be the last straw for the young star, and she subsequently
gave her father his marching orders.
"So I had to sack my own father."
However, Samantha soon realized that he'd already embezzled much of her fortune by this
point, and had avoided paying her taxes for no fewer than three years. Fox went on to
file a successful lawsuit, but the £363,000 she received was reportedly used solely to
settle her tax bill.
The singer didn't hear from her dad for several years until he contacted her one day out of
the blue. Sadly, it wasn't to make amends. John simply wanted to manufacture a reunion
for the book deal he'd been offered about their life story. Unsurprisingly, Samantha
wasn't interested, and the pair remained estranged until his death in 2000.
In an interview with Express 17 years later, Samantha reflected:
"It was very difficult. You can't say you regret having your father as your manager
because he is your father. But there's that saying: you can choose your friends but you
can't choose your family."
Samantha Fox might not be a name you hear much these days, but that doesn't mean she's
been simply resting on the royalties of her '80s hits. This multi-talented star has clearly
continued to maintain a strong work ethic ever since she made it big — and she's not
done yet, either. In 2018, Fox launched a pop comeback with the single, "Hot Boy," and
two years later reflected on her Page 3 experiences in a British TV documentary.
But it appears as though Fox has been impressively shrewd with all the money that she's earned.
Indeed, despite once being embezzled out of millions of dollars by her own father, she
still has an eight-figure sum to her name. According to Celebrity Net Worth, her fortune
reportedly stands at a cool $20 million. Although Fox isn't averse to splashing the cash, she
doesn't need to spend money to be content.
Fox revealed to The Guardian in 2003 that, quote, "the simple things in life make me
very happy." Years later, she told Express:
"I'm very much in a good place. [...] I love having a family and I'm one of those people
who if I've had a bad experience I look at the positive side. I want to always keep that
chirpy, bubbly girl that made me famous right at the beginning."
"I've never felt more confident and more mature in my life, I feel I know myself."
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