Samantha Fox

Samantha Karen Fox (born 15 April 1966) is an English singer and former glamour model. She rose to public attention aged 16, when her mother entered her photographs in an amateur modelling contest run by The Sunday People tabloid newspaper. After she placed second in the contest, she received an offer from The Sun to model topless on Page 3, where she made her first appearance on 22 February 1983. She continued to appear on Page 3 until 1986, becoming the most popular pin-up girl of her era, as well as one of the most photographed British women of the 1980s.

Transitioning to pop music after three years as a Page 3 girl, Fox released the single "Touch Me (I Want Your Body)" on 10 March 1986. It reached number one in Australia, Canada, Finland, Greece, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland, and became the first of her three Top 10 singles on the UK Singles Chart. She released her debut studio album Touch Me on 7 July 1986, which was followed by the albums Samantha Fox in 1987 and I Wanna Have Some Fun in 1988, each containing a number of international hit singles. In 1988, Fox received a Brit Award nomination for Best British Female Artist, although the award went to Alison Moyet. Fox's subsequent studio albums Just One Night (1991), 21st Century Fox (1997), and Angel with an Attitude (2005) were less commmercially successful. Fox returned to Page 3 for a full week in 1995 as the feature celebrated its 25th anniversary, and subsequently appeared in the October 1996 edition of Playboy.

Fox has appeared in a number of films and reality television shows, and has occasionally worked as a television presenter. Although she dated a number of men in the early years of her career, including Kiss rhythm guitarist Paul Stanley and Australian fraudster Peter Foster, persistent rumours began circulating in the 1990s about her sexual orientation. In 2003, Fox publicly came out as a lesbian and acknowledged her romantic relationship with her then-manager, Myra Stratton, which lasted until Stratton's death from cancer in 2015. In 2020, Fox became engaged to her Norwegian tour manager, Linda Birgitte Olsen.

Early life
Fox was born on 15 April 1966 in Mile End, East London, the oldest daughter of actress Carole Ann Wilken and John Patrick Fox. Her sister is Vanessa and she has two half-siblings from her father's second marriage, Frederica and Frankie. Fox comes from a family of market traders.

Fox took an interest in the theatre from an early age; she first appeared on a theatre stage when she was three years old. She formed her first pop band with Richard Smart, Edward Gallagher and Bob Day when she was fourteen. She attended St Thomas More Catholic School, Wood Green; and was enrolled in the Anna Scher Theatre School from the age of fifteen. The next year she signed her first record deal, with Lamborghini Records.

Modelling and music
In 1983, when Fox was 16, she released her first single. Credited as S.F.X. and released on the Lamborghini Records label, "Rockin' with My Radio"/"My Old Man" was produced by Ian Gillan Band and Spencer Davis Group member Ray Fenwick, who also wrote the b-side. The collaboration with Fenwick continued into 1984 and her second single, "Aim to Win"/"17 and Holding", credited under her full name, where Fenwick again produced and wrote the song on the b-side.

Also, in 1983, her mother submitted several photographs that she had taken of her daughter in lingerie to The Sunday People newspaper's Girl of the Year amateur modelling contest. She came in second place out of 20,000 entrants and the photographs drew her to the attention of the newspaper The Sun, which invited her to pose for Page 3.

Her parents gave their consent for her to pose topless, and her first Page 3 photograph appeared in the Sun on 22 February 1983. She signed a four-year Page 3 modelling contract with the Sun, and won its "Page 3 Girl of the Year" award for three consecutive years: 1984 to 1986. She is recognised today as the most popular pin-up girl of her era, as well as one of the most-photographed British women of the 1980s.

In 1986, Fox retired from Page 3 modelling, at the age of 20, and made the transition into a career in pop music. In 1995, aged 29, she made a one-off appearance in The Sun to promote Page 3's 25th anniversary. After receiving an overwhelmingly positive reader response, she appeared in the slot every day of that week, with Friday's final topless picture given away as an A3-sized poster. The following year, she appeared in the October issue of Playboy magazine.

In December 2009, her latest compilation album was issued, Greatest Hits, both in single CD and double CD formats. In 2012 her first 4 albums were re-issued as double deluxe CDs by Cherry Red.

Film and television
In the late 1980s, Fox appeared in television advertisements for a Leicestershire-based car dealership network with the slogan "Follow the Fox to Swithland Motors". Around the same time, she also appeared in television advertisements for bingo in The Sun newspaper.

In 1990, she appeared on the American sitcom Charles in Charge as Samantha Steele, a fictional rock star whose agent pushes her into a romance with Charles (Scott Baio) so the paparazzi will print it in the tabloids. Her film career included roles in The Match (1999), written and directed by Mick Davis and starring Richard E. Grant, Ian Holm and Tom Sizemore, 7 Cases (2015) starring Steven Berkoff, and the comedy horror film Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (2017).

In 1995, under the group name 'Sox', Fox took part in A Song for Europe, the UK heat for the Eurovision Song Contest 1995. Her song Go for the Heart finished fourth of the eight shortlisted entries with 65,436 telephone votes and the single went on to reach No. 47 on the UK Singles Chart. Also that year, she guest starred in the Hindi film Rock Dancer.

In 2008, Fox and her partner Myra Stratton took part in Celebrity Wife Swap, exchanging with Freddie Starr and his wife Donna. In November 2009, she took part in ITV's I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!; she was voted out on day 16. In 2010, she appeared in a celebrity episode of Come Dine with Me with Calum Best, Janice Dickinson, and Jeff Brazier. In 2016, Fox became a participant in Celebrity Big Brother 18, where she just missed out on reaching the final and finished in seventh place.

Personal life
Fox's father Patrick, a former carpenter, managed her career until 1991, when she hired accountants to trace over £1 million (£ million today) that she believed he had embezzled from her accounts. She sued her father, who by then had divorced and remarried, and in May 1995, she was awarded a £363,000 (£ million today) court settlement. Patrick Fox died in 2000, at which time they had not spoken for almost a decade.

In 1994, it was reported that Fox had become a born-again Christian; that year she played at the Christian arts festival Greenbelt.

In the late 1980s, Fox became romantically linked with Australian career criminal Peter Foster. They began dating, but she turned down his marriage proposal. She also had a relationship with Paul Stanley, the rhythm guitarist and co-lead vocalist of rock band Kiss. Rumours regarding Fox's sexual orientation began to surface in 1999 when she judged a lesbian beauty pageant, and rumours circulated that the woman with whom she resided, Cris Bonacci, the Australian former lead guitarist for the rock band Girlschool, was her lover. The relationship was confirmed later by Bonacci in an interview.

In 2003, Fox made a statement about her personal life: "I have slept with other women but I've not been in love before Myra Stratton. People say I'm gay. All I know is that I'm in love with Myra [Stratton, my manager]. I love her completely and want to spend the rest of my life with her." Fox said that she had been reluctant to come out because, having already dealt with obsessed fans and stalkers, she feared fans' possible reactions. In 2009, she announced her plans to form a civil partnership with Stratton. In 2015, at 60 years old, Stratton died of cancer, at which point she and Fox had been in a relationship for 16 years. Fox subsequently began a relationship with her tour manager Linda Birgitte Olsen, a native of Norway. The couple became engaged after Olsen proposed on Valentine's Day in 2020. They married on 18 June 2022.

Charitable activity
In 2008, Fox donated her favourite bra to a charity auction.

In 2011, she appeared as part of a campaign for LGBT charity the Albert Kennedy Trust.

Discography

 * Studio albums
 * Touch Me (1986)
 * Samantha Fox (1987)
 * I Wanna Have Some Fun (1988)
 * Just One Night (1991)
 * 21st Century Fox (1997)
 * Angel with an Attitude (2005)

Recording Industry Association of America RIAA
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