Emilia Fox is the newest local face to join the petition to save Notting Hill Library, her name will join a long list of well known people, such as Martin Amis, Harold Pinter, Dinny Hall, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Mark Lenu, to name just a few.

She has appeared on stage with Ralph Fiennes, last year she nearly married the comedian Vic Reeves, and she is now the latest star of the Fox thespian dynasty.

Emilia Fox said she would never go into the family business, the daughter of the actors Edward Fox and Joanna David, however she is already a well-established actress with a solid body of work behind her: Pride and Prejudice (as Georgiana Darcy), Rebecca (as Mrs de Winter, a role her mother had played nearly 20 years earlier), The Scarlet Pimpernel (as Minette), David Copperfield (as Clara), as well as many more contemporary dramas.

She recently appeared in Coriolanus and Richard II with Ralph Fiennes, which has gone on to an international tour, as well as starring in Joanna Trollope's novel Other People's Children.
The Foxes are one of Britain's great thespian dynasties: Emilia's uncle James is an actor and her father Edward starred in The Day of the Jackal and Edward and Mrs Simpson. Her grandmother, Angela Worthington, was, reputedly, the actress whose mother Noël Coward entreated in the Thirties song not to put her daughter on the stage.

Emilia was, in effect, an only child. She has an older half-sister, Lucy, from her father's first marriage, who had left home by the time Emilia was born. And a younger brother, Freddie, who is only 10. A shy child, she never went through a rebellious phase. The worst thing she ever did, she says, was to shop-lift a yoghurt raisin from a pick 'n' mix. "
Brought up in Little Venice, London, where her parents still live, she was never really aware of being part of an acting dynasty. "[My parents] had jobs and they happened to be acting. My recognition of it being something that was interesting to other people didn't really come until I started working myself." Although her parents have been together for more than 30 years, they have never married.

Emilia herself was on the verge of marriage last year, although now she admits she must have temporarily departed from her senses. She was going out with the comedian Vic Reeves, whose real name is Jim Moir. They met when she played his female sidekick in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). But they remain great friends and still plan to film another series of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) at the end of this year. Soon after breaking up with Jim she started going out with Toby Mott, a fashion designer, but that, too, ended recently because of work keeping them apart.

Currently single, Emilia is concentrating on work and indulging in her obsession with Jimmy Choo shoes as well as taking up the fight to Save The Notting Hill Library.

Credit: mynottinghill.co.uk