AN ACTING legend dropped into a Dorset cinema to show his support for the annual Purbeck Film Festival.

Edward Fox joined film fans at Wareham’s Rex Cinema on West Street to take part in a talk and question and answer session, along with his friends, historian John Julius Norwich and director, producer and screenwriter, Christopher Miles.

The star of The Day of the Jackal and A Bridge Too Far said during the visit: “I’m the president of the Rex Cinema and have known it for many years.

“For the Purbeck Film Festival, a very wide-ranging audience will have – in places including Hamworthy and Swanage, not just in cinemas, but all over the area – these wonderful films which people might never have otherwise had the chance to see. They may not even know of their existence, but they are practices of art, which is what it should be.

“The reason for all this is because so many people have worked to make the Purbeck Film Festival and it is all on a voluntary basis, out of the goodness of their own hearts. You never know with people’s lives what is going on with them, so to be able to go and watch a film and to think that it was so worthwhile to see is so important. It gives people pleasure.”

Mr Fox and friends, along with the audience, also watched a screening of the Oscar-nominated short film Six Sided Triangle on 35mm film, which was just one of many events planned for the film festival.

Andrea Etherington, chair of the Purbeck Film Festival, said: “Edward Fox is a wonderful asset to the Purbeck Film Festival and for the Rex Cinema.”

For more information, go to Purbeckfilm.com