In a career spanning more than 40 years, she has had eight top 40 singles, released over 20 albums, written two books, appeared in over 40 stage plays and 10 feature films, and voiced and presented numerous television shows.

Her mother Barbara Joy, née Rollinson, was a professional dancer, with whom he had fallen in love after seeing her on stage in Weston-super-Mare with singing and comedy double act Flanagan and Allen, and married in 1949.

She attended the Old Rep Drama School in Birmingham, paying privately because she was denied a grant, the assessor noting: "She has a lisp and isn't attractive."

"[8] A friend's suggestion that she should see the Sex Pistols led to her being attracted to the punk movement, but she resolved to do better, travelling to London to take up a career in acting and music.

[4] In the course of the 30-minute play, Willcox performed two songs she had co-written: "Floating Free" (an acoustic ballad, with Phil Daniels accompanying her on guitar) and "Dream Maker".

[13] In 1977, while playing Emma in Tales from the Vienna Woods at the National Theatre, Willcox, inspired by her role as a musician in Glitter, fronted a band called Toyah[4] which featured Joel Bogen on guitar, Mark Henry on bass, Steve Bray on drums, Peter Bush on keyboards, and herself on vocals.

[11] Having never considered herself a musician, she found herself lead singer of a successful band, although still uncertain about her own sexuality and repelled by her bandmates' antics with groupies.

[15] Plagued by budgetary issues, the film featured Willcox as the murderous 'Mad', as well as a number of other prominent figures from the punk scene, including Siouxsie Sioux, Adam Ant and Richard O’Brien.

For the lack of proper bed she slept for a while in a "second-hand" coffin, reportedly used by the French Red Cross to transport victims of fatal accidents.

[22] Citing her role in Quadrophenia as a boost to her musical career, with growing audiences Toyah signed to Safari Records, releasing a debut single "Victims of the Riddle", which topped the UK Indie Chart.

By now the original band had broken up[18] and a new lineup was in place, consisting of Phil Spalding, Nigel Glockler and Adrian Lee, only Joel Bogen and Willcox remaining.

[24] Willcox secretly married British guitarist Robert Fripp, founding member of King Crimson, in Witchampton, Dorset[30] on his 40th birthday (16 May 1986).

Then in 1988 Prostitute came out, an album through which Willcox vented her frustrations which started to accumulate as a result of having made the transformation "from all-powerful artist to invisible woman" in the course of just one year of marriage.

I started to receive mail from professors at eminent universities telling me they played the album at their lectures as an example of the new way of thinking coming from contemporary women.

Notable credits include Trafford Tanzi (at the Mermaid Theatre, leading role), Cabaret (Sally Bowles), Three Men on a Horse (winner of an Laurence Olivier Awards for Best New Comedy), and the UK tour of Arthur Smith's Live Bed Show.

[33] Viewers could accompany Willcox to various locations worldwide during her tenure as a reporter on BBC travel shows such as Holiday and Holiday- Fasten Your Seatbelts.

IThe same year, Willcox released The Acoustic Album on Aardvark Records, featuring strings from Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and produced by Oliver Davis.

[34] At the turn of the millennium, she continued to work on The Heaven and Earth Show as a newspaper reviewer and also presented a series of Whose Recipe Is It Anyway on the Carlton Food Network and 40 episodes of Beyond Medicine on the Discovery Health Channel.

[36] She returned to music in 2002 with new material for a limited edition Little Tears of Love EP and a one-off preview concert at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club.

[37] In June 2003, Willcox appeared on stage in London's West End performing the title role of Calamity Jane, which was subsequently nominated for an Evening Standard Award for Best Musical at the Shaftesbury Theatre.

Between 2007 and 2008, Willcox had a recurring role as Gail Baxter in Secret Diary of a Call Girl, the mother of the title character played by Billie Piper.

On 29 October 2007, a new single Latex Messiah (Viva la Rebel in You), came out, followed by the In the Court of the Crimson Queen album, written and produced in collaboration with Darlow and released by Willow Recordings Ltd on 15 September 2008.

The set included selections drawn exclusively from Toyah's first three albums, Sheep Farming in Barnet (1979), The Blue Meaning (1980) and Anthem (1981).

[56] Willcox went on to appear in a number of films, including Aaaaaaaah!, In Extremis, Lies We Tell, Swiperight, Heckle and Invasion Planet Earth.

[1] Also in 2020, following their acquisition of the Toyah Safari catalogue, Cherry Red Records began reissuing Willcox's early albums in deluxe 2CD/DVD and vinyl formats.

On Saturdays she answers fan questions and shares archive performances in Toyah at Home and co-hosts Agony Aunts alongside her husband Robert Fripp.

She and Fripp started publishing weekly videos in 2021, covering songs such as Slipknot's "Psychosocial", Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell", Rammstein's "Keine Lust", Foo Fighters' "All My Life", Grace Jones' "Slave to the Rhythm" and Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name".

[65][66] Willcox joined Billy Idol on his UK live dates on The Roadside Tour 2022, alongside special guests Killing Joke.

[69][70][71] From September 2024 she was a contestant on the twenty-second series of the BBC competition Strictly Come Dancing and was partnered with professional dancer Neil Jones.

[76] In 1987 Willcox was invited to make a speech at the Women of the Year ceremony in the presence of Diana, Princess of Wales, expressing her views on the subject of how being disabled (in her case, dyslexia[77]) can be a goad to creativity and inspire a craving for a fuller life experience.