I nearly rejected my baby: Laurence Fox on the pressures of being a new dad

By Kathryn Knight

Today he's the devoted dad, but when his wife gave birth, Laurence Fox struggled to love his son.

A word of advice for new visitors to the Fox residence: don't, whatever you do, interfere with the bedtime routine of baby Winston, new offspring of actor Laurence Fox and his actress wife, Billie Piper.

It can all but ruin the delicately balanced eco-system that is Winston's sleep pattern, and it drives his parents to distraction. Laurence, certainly, finds the outstaying- their- welcome brigade near incomprehensible. 'Winston didn't sleep last night, which was hell – and it's because we had friends for lunch who just refused to leave.

Laurence Fox, pictured with wife Billie Piper and baby Noah, says, definitely went through really odd feelings, really animal ones such as, do I even want this baby?

'Why do people do that?' he rolls his eyes. 'You know, it's seven o'clock, we're putting the baby to bed, how much more obvious do you want me to be about the fact that you need to go home now? But, instead, they were still chatting away at half past eight, and I was sitting there with rage boiling in my eyes, thinking, "You've just denied me an hour-and-a-half of sleep."'

Laurence pauses, looking suitably incensed, before breaking into a grin. 'I mean, they don't have kids, so basically they just don't get it.' It is a scenario instantly recognisable to all new parents, as is Laurence's preoccupation with sleep – or lack of it – following Winston's arrival in October last year.

His birth may have sealed what Laurence refers to as the happiest year of his life, bookended by his 2007 New Year's Eve wedding to Billie and Winston's birth ten months later, but it doesn't make those nocturnal disturbances any easier to deal with. 'It's the cumulative effect of the lack of sleep that gets to you,' he says. 'It has this peculiar effect on your brain. You lose compassion, sensitivity, kindness – they're the first things to go in extreme situations. You stop opening doors for your missus when she's carrying the shopping bags. Instead, you plough through yourself, in an I-must get- through-this-myself way. It's quite scary.'

Still, sleepless nights aside, he couldn't be more thrilled with the new arrival. Laurence whips out his phone to reveal a series of photos showing a cute, chubby little thing with Laurence's eyes and Billie's unmistakable wide mouth.

'He's starting to look like both of us now,' Laurence says proudly. He scrolls back through his phone to show some more pictures. I mean, look at these, when he was born – he looks exactly like me. So he's really changed already. I think, ultimately, that he's going to end up with my hair and her eyebrows, which is good, as I don't have any eyebrows. He's gorgeous.'

But then again, Winston does have good genes on his side. On the one hand, he's got 30-year-old Mr Fox, all height and cheekbones, son of actor James, nephew of actor Edward and cousin of actress Emilia. And on the other, he has 26-year old Ms Piper, the winsome looking, former pop starlet and teenage bride of , and now the nation's belle de jour.

The couple met when they worked together on a theatrical revival of 's play for the stage in 2006, and romance quickly ensued. A year later, the couple left London for what Laurence calls their 'ramshackle' cottage in West Sussex, and by the end of the same year they were married, in a candlelit ceremony attended by Evans and his new bride, golf writer Natasha Shishmanian (the Foxes had attended their nuptials four months earlier).

Some husbands – not to mention wives – might find it all a bit too cosy, but it seems all four genuinely get on famously, so much so that when Natasha gave birth to her first baby last month, a son called Noah, it was the Foxes who were among the first visitors to the hospital.

'Oh, yes, Noah's great,' says Laurence amiably. When Billie was with Evans, she had a reputation for being something of a party girl, which involved spending a lot of time getting happily sozzled over long lunches with her then husband. Laurence admits that they, too, were partial to 'spending a few hours in the pub'.

But it's all changed since Winston came on the scene. 'Having a baby has changed her,' he says. 'She used to smoke and drink, and she does neither now, although she has the odd roll-up once in a while. We used to be quite lazy country folk really, you know, nip down the pub for hours, but now that's sort of stopped, although we're trying to get back into it.'

Laurence gets out his phone again to show me a photograph of his wife the day before she gave birth, displaying an enormous tummy and her trademark grin. 'She was absolutely massive at the end. Look at her! But now you'd never know she'd had a baby.' Following Winston's birth, Laurence was only able to take one day off from filming the fourth and latest series of the detective drama Lewis, in which he appears as DS Hathaway opposite 's eponymous Inspector.

In fact, Laurence is candid enough to admit that he went through a series of conflicting emotions following Winston's arrival and his return to work.

'I definitely went through really odd feelings, really animal ones such as, "Do I even want this baby?" I was like that for about two weeks after he was born.

At one point I wanted to go and set fire to all my possessions. Very odd.' Men don't talk about this sort of thing very often, I say, and Laurence agrees. 'Well, they just go and get drunk don't they? I think some of it is that men can have babies whenever they want, so, until they actually connect with this baby, then it's tough, but then it suddenly happens, like that.' He clicks his fingers.

For Laurence, his son's first smile was the tipping point. 'Suddenly I looked at him and thought, "You're called Winston" – I'd called him "it" for ages, as in "it's doing that" – and then it just clicked. And that's when you become – it's awful isn't it, when clichés are true – but that's when you go, "I'm not going to ever let anything bad happen to you – ever." And now he's just a joy.'

Billie, meanwhile, has taken to motherhood more easily. 'She's really good. She doesn't lean on me very much, I must say. She doesn't ever go, "Oh, this is just too much, can you just take him?" – although I do a man's share of nappies. And I put him to bed and she feeds him.'

How has motherhood changed her? 'Actually, I think women become harder when they've had a baby because they've been through something. They're different because they've suffered.

So Bill's harder than she used to be, not in a nasty way, but she's definitely harder. There's certain things we would have got stressed about before he was born – you know, "Oh, am I ever going to get another job?" Well, there's no time for any of that any more. It's stand up and face it and get on with it.'

A troubled teenager who hated his public school, Harrow, Laurence had little sense of what he wanted to do, getting expelled from the sixth form to face an uncertain future. 'At home, we – my three brothers, Thomas, Robin and Jack, and sister, Lydia – were always taught to speak your mind, to say what you thought no matter who was speaking. And that doesn't work at public school, certainly not for boys anyway,' Laurence reflects. 'It wasn't a happy time for me.'

Did he harbour resentment toward his parents, James and Mary, for sending him there? 'No, not really. They've always been on our side, wanted the best for us. And that's one thing you realise when you become a parent yourself – you don't know what's right, so you go with your instincts, and you try and do the best thing. It's just that sometimes the best thing can be the worst thing.'

After expulsion from Harrow, Laurence worked as a gardener in Wimbledon, where he was still living with his parents, and then in an office analysing seismological data. Acting only came up after his father asked if he had thought about it over a casual family breakfast one weekend. With nothing particularly to lose, Laurence applied to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.

'RADA was good because it was the first thing I ever took seriously – especially when they first told me I didn't have a place. I made it my business to get in. It was the first time I was serious about something in my life.'

After graduating, a substantial career followed, with parts in a number of feature films, including the period drama , and Colditz, in which his father also starred. They appear together again in the first episode of the new Lewis series.

But now that filming is over he is back in that ramshackle cottage with his wife and baby, not to mention their three chickens, two pigs and two dogs. 'They were a bit of a mistake, the pigs,' Laurence confides now.

'Much as I love them, and I do, it takes an hour to sort the buggers out every morning and they're far, far bigger than they were meant to be. I think they might have to go.'