Actor/model would prefer to be rapping

Thursday, January 14, 2010
By Carole Perkins
Special to Go Triad

Taylor Swift fans may know him as the heart throb in Taylor's video, "Fifteen."

But what millions of teenage girls don't know is that he is a rapper with lofty musical ambitions and a former basketball player who helped lead Greensboro Day School's team to victory in the Little Four Tournament in 2006.

Alan Fox is a New York City-based actor/model from Greensboro, who in the span of about a year has appeared on billboards, in television commercials and department store fliers and has bared his six-pack abs in his underwear for the clothing store Abercrombie & Fitch.

He takes classes at Hunter College in New York City and acting classes with Seth Barrish, a renowned acting coach who has been influential in the career of actress Anne Hathaway.

It's all pretty heady stuff for the 21-year-old former jock who thought basketball was his ultimate career.

Fox sits on the edge of a chair, fiddling with tufts of brown bangs that stick out of his toboggan worn as if to disguise his all-American good looks. The hat only accentuates his striking green eyes and straight brow.

"I thought I would play basketball or coach the rest of my life," Fox says. "I got injured my senior year in high school and ended up having surgery my freshman year at UNCG. After my surgery, I had to re-evaluate my life and figure out something else to do."

Encouraged by his mother to try modeling, Fox traded in his basketball shoes and signed with Greensboro-based modeling agency, Directions USA.

"Modeling seems kind of silly, but it offered me an opportunity to travel and explore parts of my life I wasn't used to," he says.

After three months of "modeling boot camp" in Florida, Fox moved back to Greensboro and traveled back and forth to New York City to model, a fact he hid from his friends.

"I was kind of embarrassed, you know?" he says. "All my friends were going to college, and here I was at loose ends. I was aware that I couldn't model forever. I had acted in the school play my senior year on a bet and found I really liked acting. So I moved to New York City to get serious about acting and to be the best I could be."

Right before the move in November, Fox's agent called to tell him he was being considered for a part in the Taylor Swift video "Fifteen." Fox drove to Nashville, Tenn., and landed the role of the boy who seduces, then rejects, Taylor's best friend Abigail, who is also Taylor's best friend offscreen.

"Playing that character was the most difficult acting I've ever done," he says. "I didn't want to be too cliché like the part always portrayed in high school movies, but at the same time, everybody knows that kind of guy. It's like I told my parents, I'm just a pawn in this much greater machine which is Taylor Swift. My philosophy was that it was a really small part but you have to start somewhere.

"Taylor is the most intelligent and well-spoken 'star' I've been around," Fox says. "She's very sweet but at the same time has this very intelligent, sarcastic wit about her.

"She has this incredible ability to verbalize all these emotions that teenage girls feel, not that I know how teenage girls feel," Fox says, laughing.

He says he'd like to "parlay this whole acting/modeling thing" into his passion for rapping, a hobby he started in middle school that escalated into a fan base eager to buy his self-released CDs. Fox leans back in his chair, visibly relaxing as the conversation turns to music

"I was always a minority on the basketball teams. I got a kick out of making words rhyme so I could fit it," he says." I can't sing, but I like to express myself musically. If I could write the perfect song it would be to convey all these feelings I can't put my finger on. I try to write in a way that captures emotions in songs."

He refuses credit for his accomplishments, politely handing any success over to "the best parents in the world."

"I can't take a lot of credit for what I do," he says. "I'm not entitled. Monetary gain or seeing myself on television doesn't concern me as much as how I can affect other people. I've had so many people support me and affect me positively. My goal is to affect a million people in the same way."



Contact Carole Perkins at CPGuilford@aol.com