Born into a theatrical family, British actor James Fox made his film bow as a child actor in 1950, using his own name, William Fox. Fox's first movie was The Miniver Story (1950), a Hollywood-financed sequel to 1942's Mrs. Miniver. The best of the actor's earliest appearances was in The Magnet (1950), in which 11-year-old Fox played a fun-loving young boy at play with his mates.
Fox changed his first name to James when he began assuming adult roles in the early 1960s, a period in which he played upper-class types. It was in one of these roles that Fox appeared with Dirk Bogarde in the brooding, Freudian Harold Pinter drama The Servant (1963); that same year, Fox appeared in the angry young man exercise The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, which starred Tom Courtenay With his Servant vis-a-vis Sarah Miles, Fox headlined an international cast in the comedy extravaganza Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965). Fox continued in films into the 1980s, generally in class-A items like A Passage to India (1984) and The Russia House (1989). Fox continues to play old-blood aristocrats in films, most recently as the foolishly fascistic lord of the manor in Remains of the Day (1993); he also appeared in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994) and Heart of Darkness (1994). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide. 