Actress Emilia Fox - star of Silent Witness and spokesperson for The Galaxy Irresistible Reads campaign - talks about her life-long love affair with books.

By Sarah O'Meara

Looking like an English rose with Hollywood roots, Emilia Fox collapses gracefully on the sofa.

Having come straight from work - the set of BBC One's forensic detective series Silent Witness - she combines the rock chick and romantic heroine look in her draping patterned blouse, hot pink denim jeans and matching pink heels.

Laughing, she recalls being recently criticised by a Sunday newspaper for going to an awards ceremony dressed 'as if she wishes a she were curled up in a corner reading Keats'.

"I think it was meant as a huge criticism and actually it I took it as a huge compliment," Emilia says.

"I conjured up this romantic image of myself which couldn't be further from the truth."

Despite looking like the kinds of girl who reads poetry while drinking tea under a gazebo, Emilia is a true bookworm.

She's also fronting Galaxy's Irresistible Reads campaign, which will see more than one million books given away until June. The 20 books selected for the giveaway include The Secret Life Of A Slummy Mummy by Fiona Neill, The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillipa Gregory and One Shot by Lee Child.

"I think one can have terrible preconceptions of what books one might like to read or not," Emilia says.

"I really enjoyed reading Katie Price's novel 'Crystal', which I would recommend to anyone who is getting withdrawal symptoms from The X Factor. And I had never read a Lee Child novel before because I assumed it might be more of a boy's book. But in between takes at work I was hungrily diving back in.

"I found the forensics of Lee Child interesting, probably because of my job. We enter into such dark worlds on Silent Witness nothing really surprises me any more. I don't know that that's really a good thing. My innocence has been lost."

Emilia Fox is very good at confounding expectations. Born into an acting dynasty - her mother is Joanna David and father Edward Fox - she went on to marry Jared Harris, the son of the late Irish actor Richard Harris.

Fortunately, her high-level artistic affiliations haven't turned her into a snob, or made her arrogant.

"Doing Silent Witness is my normal job. Knowing I'm working is something I need for my own mental security."

But after five years working of wearing a white lab coat in London's very non-glamorous north Acton, and isn't it time she moved on?

"It is obvious in some ways," she agrees.

"But as long as I can do other things at the same time, I'm really happy. If I didn't think that it worked, or if I thought it was detrimental to my career, I wouldn't go back. But actually Silent Witness takes you to a place where people want to involve you in other things."

Her upcoming projects include a movie adaptation of the Oscar Wilde novel A Picture of Dorian Gray, due to be released later this year.

Emilia avidly read the book before filming started, but admits that her role as the wife of Lord Henry Wotton (played by Colin Firth) never really got off the ground.

"In the film, truthfully, I am a very well dressed, glorified, extra and I did it for the fun of working with Colin again, Oli Parker [the director], and being in beautiful dresses," she says.

"In the book, Lady Victoria Wotton has got quite an interesting character. There is a great description of her saying it looked as though she threw her clothes in a storm. And that would have been really fun to play. But the film is not about his relationship with his wife. It's totally focused on the stars Ben Chaplin and Colin Firth. So although I thought it was terribly important, I had to do all of that acting in my head!"

Emilia has been in the spotlight since the age of 20 when she appeared in the iconic BBC version of Pride And Prejudice. But despite being a well known face, she says the public don't intrude on her life.

"I think it depends how you walk around. I walk around like the woman in The Secret Life Of A Slummy Mummy, so people don't associate me with the woman who walks around on the TV, with her hair all curled and make up beautifully put on."

She and Harris filed for divorce in January, citing 'irreconcilable differences', but Emilia says she will always be a romantic at heart.

"When I was on honeymoon with Jared I remember I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed while reading The Time Traveller's Wife because it's such a great love story. He said, 'What on earth has happened to you?'. And I was like, 'You've got to read this book.' And he said, 'I don't want to read that book if that's what I'm going to be like. It would very embarrassing. Imagine if I was reading it on a plane..!'"

She says starring in BBC Four's Consuming Passion: 100 Years Of Mills And Boon earlier this year reminded her just how much she wants a happy ending.

"I do believe in the romantic ending in real life. I can't help it. And the response from people who saw Consuming Passion - emails, letters and call - they all said that it gave them such pleasure watching it. I felt like all the women I spoke too had that fantasy too."