Kerry Fox Movies
New Zealand actress Kerry Fox can claim to have led one of the industry's more steadfastly international careers. Born in New Zealand, based in London, a resident of Sydney, and an actress in films that take her to all corners of the globe, Fox has led a life as varied as the films in which she appears.Born in Wellington on July 30, 1966, Fox had her screen breakthrough as the star of Jane Campion's An Angel at My Table (1990). Her portrayal of New Zealand writer Janet Frame earned great acclaim, essentially jump-starting Fox's career. She next gave a strong performance in Gillian Armstrong's The Last Days of Chez Nous (1992), a family drama that cast her as the emotionally needy younger sister of a woman struggling with the disintegration of her marriage. Two years later, Fox earned cult credibility as one of the stars, along with Ewan McGregor and Christopher Eccleston, of Danny Boyle's Shallow Grave. A moody, stylish black comedy about three Edinburgh flatmates attempting to deal with a dead flatmate and his suitcase full of money, the film was an unanticipated international success.
Fox subsequently did steady work in a number of international productions, including Canadian Thom Fitzgerald's acclaimed The Hanging Garden (1997), Michael Winterbottom's Welcome to Sarajevo (1997), To Walk with Lions (1999), which was shot entirely in Kenya, and Fanny and Elvis (1999), a British comedy that cast Fox as a 30-something woman desperate to conceive a child. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
- 1993
- NR
Friendship, politics, violence, and personal responsibility meet head on in this drama. In the late 1980s, three young women who are completing their college education share a house together in Johannesburg, South Africa. Aninka (Michele Burgers) is the daughter of wealthy Afrikaners; she is studying archeology and has personally rejected her family's pro-apartheid politics. Thoko (Dambisa Kente) is Black and receiving a degree in education; her family has little money, and her mother works as a cleaning woman to help pay her daughter's tuition. Sophie (Kerry Fox), whose British parents are well-to-do, is studying library science, and unknown to the others, she has taken a very strong position against South Africa's policy of minority rule. Sophie has joined a terrorist group determined to fight apartheid by any means necessary; under orders from the group, she places a bomb at a busy airport in Johannesburg, killing many innocent bystanders in the process. Sophie's confusion and guilt over the consequences of her actions drive a wedge between herself and her husband, a fellow activist, and it complicates her friendship with Aninka and Thoko. Writer-director Elaine Proctor won the Golden Camera award at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival for her work on Friends. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kerry Fox, Dambisa Kente, (more)
- 1992
- R
Gillian Armstrong directed this quietly bittersweet and coldly ironic examination of the death throes of a crumbling marriage. Set in the lush summer light of Sydney, the film examines the dying marriage of Beth (Lisa Harrow), a middle-aged writer living with her French husband J.P. (Bruno Ganz) and her teenage daughter Annie (Miranda Otto). Beth and J.P. are maintaining their marriage through a delicate thread of disinterest and patronizing that is torn asunder with the arrival of Beth's younger sister Vicki (Kerry Fox). Along with the arrival of Vicki, Beth and J.P. take in a boarder, a clean-cut teen named Tim (Kiri Paramore). These two new additions to the family infuse the home with a new vitality, but that only holds the dissolution of the marriage in abeyance for a time. In an effort to make peace with her father (Bill Hunter), Beth takes him on a trip to the outback, where she believes she might be able to communicate with him. With Beth gone, J.P. and Vicki have an affair, and they abandon the family to start life on their own. Beth, now alone, feels a sense of liberation and purpose and begins to start her life anew. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lisa Harrow, Bruno Ganz, (more)
New Zealand poet Janet Frame is the subject of Jane Campion's biographical drama, which presents a poetically evocative look at the authoress' turbulent life. The film begins with a look at Frame's childhood, showing her as a bright but odd-looking, emotionally fragile young girl with a knack for writing. Frame faces great difficulty in adapting to the conventional rural life around her, and her social awkwardness only worsens as she grows older. After she fails in her attempt to become a schoolteacher due to an intense panic attack, she is subject to a psychiatric evaluation and shamefully misdiagnosed as a schizophrenic. Frame is subsequently committed to a mental institution, where she suffers years of unnecessary shock treatments and other horrors. Her salvation comes through her writings, however, which attract the attention of a renowned author who arranges her release. While the nightmare of Frame's institutionalization is presented with great sensitivity and power, Campion and screenwriter Laura Jones, to their credit, refuse to simplify her story to this one pivotal event. Instead, they pay equal attention to Frame's subsequent life, as she slowly adjusts life in the outside world, experiencing literary success and her first romance. Expressive visuals add immeasurably to the total effect, while Kerry Fox's superb performance creates a truly affecting portrait of Frame. Impressively, the film was originally made as a mini-series for New Zealand television, and slightly reedited for a later theatrical release. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kerry Fox, Alexia Keogh, (more)
- 1988
- R
Ozzy Osbourne, Gene Simmons, and Aerosmith's Joe Perry and Steven Tyler are among the Heavy Metal artists interviewed in The Decline of Western Civilization 2: The Metal Years. This follow-up to filmmaker Penelope Spheeris' classic 1981 "punk" documentary The Decline of Western Civilization is a bit more reflective and word-dominated than its predecessor, but no less entertaining. One striking aspect of the film is its before-and-after comparisons of the impact of MTV. Heavy Metal newcomers tend to overpraise the cable service, while the "oldsters" implicitly decry the mainstreaming-and in some cases, homogenizing--of their best work. Interestingly, Spheeris' own style has become more mainstream in the years since Decline of Western Civilization, thanks to experience gleaned on such dramatic films as Hollywood Vice Squad (1986) and Dudes (1987). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anthony Joseph Perry, Steven Tyler, (more)
