Samantha Fox

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Samantha Fox
Birthdate:	15 April 1966 (1966-04-15) (age 42)
Birth location:	Mile End, London, England
Birth name:	Samantha Karen Fox
Measurements:	34C-24-33
Height:	5 ft 1 in (1.55 m)
Eye color:	Blue
Hair color:	Blonde
Ethnicity:	English
Official web site
Samantha Fox at IMDb

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

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

Contents 1 Background 2 Modeling career 3 Music career 4 Fox's films 5 Other sidelines 6 Personal life 7 Charitable activity 8 Discography 9 Trivia 10 References 11 External links

[edit] 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 sister, Vanessa, who is six years younger, 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.

[edit] Modeling career

In early 1983, 16-year-old Samantha Fox posed in her bedroom wearing lingerie, while her mother Carole took photographs for the The Sunday People newspaper's "Face and Shape of 1983" amateur modeling contest. Judged joint runner-up in the contest, Fox had her pictures published, and was invited for a professional photo shoot with The Sun tabloid newspaper shortly afterwards. On Tuesday, 22 February 1983, with her parents' full support, she made her first topless appearance as The Sun's Page Three girl under the headline "Sam, 16, Quits A-Levels for Ooh-Levels."

Fox's Cockney background, bubbly-blonde looks, winning smile, and curvaceous 36D breasts (which looked disproportionately large on her diminutive 5 ft 1 in [1.55 m] frame) arguably made her Britain's premiere sex symbol of the 1980s. After famously insuring her breasts for a quarter of a million pounds sterling, she went on to win The Sun's Page Three Girl of the Year award for three consecutive years between 1984 and 1986. She also posed nude for British soft-porn magazines, although very few full-frontal shots were ever published.

Fox retired from Page Three modeling 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; Friday's final topless picture was 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 modeling career in the early days, but the two split acrimoniously when she discovered that he was embezzling her money. Her parents later divorced.

[edit] Music career

In the late-1980s, Fox began a successful singing career, producing three albums in three years (1986-1988), and 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 on both sides of the Atlantic (#3 in the UK; #4 in the US). It also topped the charts in many countries. 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.

After a 3-year break, Samantha Fox released her fourth and final album in for Jive Records in 1991, entitled Just One Night. The album mirrored her previous work on 1988's I Wanna Have Some Fun, by presenting a mix of old school hip-hop style tracks featuring Full Force, along with a collection of pop & rock tracks. In 1992, Jive released Samantha's first official compilation, Greatest Hits, which featured three new tracks.

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 fan base. 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.

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.

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).

[edit] Fox's films

Fox's pictures gained her such fandom in India that she was invited to star in a Bollywood film 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.

[edit] Other sidelines

In 1986 Fox was featured in a strip poker game (Samantha Fox Strip Poker) for Commodore Amiga, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, MSX, 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.

In 2008, Fox and her partner Myra took part in Celebrity Wife Swap, exchanging with Freddie Starr and his wife Donna.

[edit] 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. During this time she and Peter decided to adopt a young Australian boy named Simon. Tragedy struck when Simon accidentally ingested a bottle of alcohol and was then rendered comatose. 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 modeling 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."

”

Rumors regarding Fox's sexual orientation 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: ^{[1] [2]}

“

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.

”

[edit] Charitable activity

Samantha Fox has donated her favourite bra to a charity auction which will see fans able to buy a piece of celebrity clothing. ^[3] Sense's Strip It Off three-day auction will begin on March 4th and will see members of the public bidding for stars' garments in order to raise money for the deafblind charity.

[edit] 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 1 bonus track

[edit] Trivia

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

As a 14 year old, Sam played football for the Arsenal ladies football team, before moving on to page three modelling three years later

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official Website
• Samantha Fox at the Internet Movie Database
• Your Sinclair Review of Samantha Fox Strip Poker
• Samantha Fox Forum
• Official Fan Club
• Fan Site with Discography

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