Charlotte Kate Fox

Family

Fox is born Charlotte Elizabeth Demo Varney in Santa Fe, New Mexico to her parents, Cynthia Demo and Edward Latin Varney III, on August 14, 1985. Edward (Ted) was in the construction business, and Cynthia (Cindy) was a real estate agent. Fox's older half-brother, Matthew, is sixteen years older than Fox, and as a result, Fox did not grow up with him. When Fox was nine, her parents divorced. Her mother remarried John Fox and soon Charlotte welcome a little brother, William Demo Fox.

Fox began ballet at the age of five and continued her dancing career until the age of sixteen, when she began acting in local theater productions. At sixteen, Fox left her Catholic high school, and enlisted in a home-school program in order to devote more time to theater and film. She graduated high school early and began taking classes at a community college at age sixteen.

Education

Fox attended Marymount Manhattan College for seven months studying theater, but left New York in favor of the desert. She soon enrolled at the College of Santa Fe in her hometown, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and graduated with honors with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theater in 2008.

After a two-year string of odd jobs (including being the personal assistant to John Walsh of the TV show America's Most Wanted), Fox applied to Northern Illinois University and was accepted into a class of eighteen other students in the fall of 2010. Three years later, Fox graduated with an MFA. During her time at Northern Illinois University, Fox also attended summer workshops held at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York City.

On May 16, 2015, Fox received an honorary doctorate from the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, formerly known as the College of Santa Fe, during the commencement ceremony where Fox was the commencement speaker.

Acting career

Fox began her acting career at age sixteen when she appeared as an extra in the Starz television series Crash. After that, she appeared in professional and regional theater productions, eventually obtaining her Equity membership while performing in the Actor's Theatre of Charlotte's Venus in Fur as Vanda. She appeared in smaller independent films, until she was cast as the first foreign lead of the 150-episode NHK Japanese morning drama Massan playing Ellie, a character based on the real-life Rita Cowan (Taketsuru Rita). Fox was chosen from among 521 applicants (232 from Japan, 289 from outside Japan).

Fox appeared in all 150 episodes of this run of the NHK Asadora (Morning Drama). Fox's performance was entirely in Japanese, save occasional scenes which naturally called for English, e.g., retrospective scenes in the character's home in Scotland (actually shot on locations in Japan such as Hokkaido). This was true despite the fact that she had not had any prior experience in the Japanese language nor had she visited Japan previous to her trip to perform for the show's screen test. Each line of Fox's script included three additional lines, the first of which was the romanized script of the Japanese line, followed by the translated line in English, and finally by the word-for-word literal translation in English which follows the Japanese word order. This way Fox would not only learn the Japanese lines but also acknowledge where each word would occur in a given line, thus acting according to the Japanese word order whether the lines were uttered by her or by her co-performers. This caused Fox's script to be ten times thicker than that for the native Japanese co-actors on the show. "If I had been in Charlotte's position, I would have run away to America," said Tetsuji Tamayama, co-lead who played the eponymous character who is married to Fox's character Ellie. When polled by NHK as to the reasons for watching Massan, 60% of the viewers chose Fox as the reason (second only to "Interesting story and theme" at 65%).

The final episode of Massan aired on March 28, 2015. The show recorded the mean audience ratings of 21.1% through its run, ranking third-highest of the past 20 Asadora titles.

In February 2015, an announcement was made that Fox had landed the role of the lead character Roxie Hart in the Broadway musical production of Chicago, which has been continuously running at the Ambassador Theatre in New York since 1996. She is scheduled to perform there from November 2 to November 15, 2015. Fox will also perform in Japan on a tour of Chicago in Tokyo December 4 thru 23, 2015 and in Osaka December 26 and 27, 2015.

On August 19, 2015 NHK aired on its satellite broadcasting channel a documentary program entitled あの歌に出会いたい~シャーロットの沖縄歌探しの旅～(I Want to Meet That Song – Charlotte's Journey in Search of Okinawa's Songs), in which Fox was the principal traveler. This was her first trip ever to Okinawa.

On September 5, 2015, TV Asahi of Japan aired a made-for-TV movie entitled 名探偵キャサリン (Detective Catherine), based on the detective novel series by Misa Yamamura (山村美紗), in which Fox performed in the lead role of Catherine Turner, a multilingual Columbia University graduate and the only daughter of a former vice president of the United States. The show was entirely in Japanese, except where English was appropriate, as was the case with Massan.

Music

On April 29, 2015 Fox released in Japan a single music CD entitled Gondora no Uta (ゴンドラの唄 "The Song of Gondola"). Then on August 19, 2015, she released an album entitled Wabi Sabi, produced by American artist Kishi Bashi. Fox performed on an eight-city live concert tour in Japan for the new album, starting on August 18, 2015 in Shibuya, Tokyo, and ending in the city of Natori in Miyagi Prefecture on September 8, 2015.

Advertising

As of August 2015, Fox has appeared in six television commercials in Japan, including those for AEON and Nissan. She was also featured in the printed and web advertising for the grand opening of Uniqlo Osaka.