Sidney Fox (born Sarah Liefer; December 10, 1907 – November 15, 1942) was an American stage and film actress in the late 1920s and 1930s. Fox's Hollywood film debut was in Universal Pictures' 1931 production Bad Sister, which is notable for also being the first film of legendary actress Bette Davis.
Sarah Liefer was born in 1907 in "Poland-Galicia". In 1911, Sidney emigrated with her Jewish parents—Rucha Rose (née Szapiro) and Jacob Liefer—to New York, where by 1920 her mother had remarried. Rose's second husband was Joseph Fox, who identified himself in government records as a Yiddish-speaking native of Poland. After her mother's marriage to Fox, Sidney adopted her step-father's surname, although the federal census of 1930 shows her younger brother Samuel continued to use his given last name, Liefer, in the Fox household. The census documents that in April that year, 22-year-old Sidney was living with her mother and stepfather on the 500 block of West 178th Street in Manhattan, along with Samuel and their two stepbrothers. Sidney identified herself then professionally as a stenographer, while during any spare time, she was busy pursuing roles in stage productions. Additional sources regarding Fox's early life indicate she was employed in an array of other jobs as well, including work as a seamstress, a secretary in a law firm, and as a model or "mannequin" in a shop on Fifth Avenue.
By the late 1920s, Fox had begun studying acting to establish a stage or film career. She temporarily joined a touring theatrical company around 1928, and within a year, she was performing on Broadway. She had a role in It Never Rains in 1929, and the next year, she portrayed the character Rhoda Wampas in the comedy Lost Sheep. In May 1930, the theatre critic for Variety gave Lost Sheep a lukewarm review but complimented Fox's energetic performance in the play, noting "That little cutie Sidney Fox, who first came out in It Never Rains, pleased again with her Rhoda." Someone else in the audience was impressed with Fox, Carl Laemmle Jr., then head of production at Universal Studios. Laemmle soon signed her to a multi-year contract with the Hollywood film company.

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