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JULIE COX AS ANNABELLA MILBANKE IN BYRON

Date : 26 August 2003, Publication : BBC.co.uk

Byron may have called Annabella Milbanke his Byron may have called Annabella Milbanke his "princess of parallelograms" but there's nothing square about Julie Cox, the young actress who plays the poet's wronged wife. Julie Cox, who grew up in Indonesia and harbours a secret passion for kung fu, boasts a colourful CV, featuring roles in BBC One's popular spy drama Spooks, US mini-series Dune and Cirque du Soleil's dazzling love story, Alegria. And though her role in Byron is her most challenging to date, Julie threw herself into it with a passion that matched Annabella's when she set out to save her husband's soul.

"It's so rare that you get the opportunity to play someone who actually existed and I've been absorbed in Annabella's psychology almost to the point of obsession," admits the 30-year-old actress.

"Annabella was inscredibly complex and very intelligent, but because she was brought up in complete isolation, she didn't really fit in with London society. She was religious, very pious, but also quite romantic and self-assured. In fact, one of the things I like most about her is that she was full of spirit, energy and idealism...and love - she really did love Byron."

Cox particularly relished the opportunity to play opposite Jonny Lee Miller, whose on-screen transformation she describes as "extraordinary".

"He's found this fantastic voice and the first time I saw him in costume, it was like seeing the ghost of Byron. I think this is going to make a lot of people take notice of him. Though there is something slightly disconcerting about your male star being more beautiful than you are !" she laughs.

When Annabella and Byron married in January 1815, Byron was London's most celebrated poet and its most desirable lover. His liaison with Lady Caroline Lamb had scandalised society and left her reputation in ruins. But, as Cox points out, Byron remained "the man all the men wanted to drink with and all the women wanted to sleep with."

And yet when Annabella first encountered the "mad, bad" poet, she did not immediately fall under his spell. While Byron stirred up passions in most women (and not a few men), he aroused only Christian concern in Annabella - something which both amused and antagonised him.

"Byron had this whole 'bad boy' self-image and Annabella just wanted to cut through it and say : 'You are a good person'. They'd have these wonderful conversations and she was convinced that they had a true meeting of minds and naïvely believed that they could have a relationship," says Cox.

And so, despite her fondness for mathematics (hence Byron's mocking nickname for her), Annabella failed to see that this particular "one plus one" could only equal disaster.

"When they married, she initially wanted to reform him and bring out the good in him. But what actually happened was the opposite - they brought out the worst in each other."

"Almost from the first second Annabella and Byron were married, he treated her abysmally. The amound of mental abuse she got...I think a lot of people would have just walked away. But she saw it as her duty and she thought he could be changed.

"But she loved the sex !" she continues, laughing. "In fact, in one of the things I read when I was researching the part - I think it was in one of Byron's letters to Lady Melbourne - he said it was sometimes the only way to shut her up !"

As the celebrity couple of their day, Lord and Lady Byron's strange relationship became the cause célèbre of Regency England. But speculation reached fever pitch when, after only a year of marriage, and just a month after the birth of their daughter, Annabella left Byron and went home to her parents - never to see him again.

Though Annabella would subsequently only hint at the circumstances that prompted her to leave, the separation gave rise to allegations of every kind of excess - including illegal sodomising by her errant husband. Lurid rumours about his homosexuality and incestuous love for his half-sister, Augusta, eventually drove Byron into exile and blighted Annabella for the rest of her life.

"It's a tragic story and an incredible journey from the beginning for Annabella - through all the excitment and euphoria of the marriage, to the crumbling of it, the separation and post-separation.

"She underwent such a transformation and became quite bitter."

Now based in London, Cox led a nomadic life as a child. Following the death of their Scots-Irish mother when they were very young, she and her siblings followed their engineer father around South East Asia - something which accounts for the actress's unexpected predilection for Bruce Lee movies and proficiency in martial arts.

"I'm mad about kung fu movies - probably because that's all we ever got to see growing up abroad," she says. "I get really jealous when the boys get to do all the fun stuff like fencing and guns and stunts. I love all this period stuff, I love all the drama and serious acting but it would make me so happy to go out and kick some ass !".