A VERY QUIET

At 74, Brian Cox has gone from Shakespearean luvvie to Hollywood heartthrob thanks to a clutch of high- profile roles and an Emmy nomination for his role in Succession

ITTING perhaps for one of our leading actors who has portrayed many Shakespearian patriarchs, Brian Cox’s most recent role is playing a ferocious media tycoon who savages his own children. In Succession, for which he is nominated for best actor at tomorrow’s prestigious Emmy awards, he plays Logan Roy, an ageing billionaire who must decide which of his squabbling, entitled offspring will inherit his global entertainment and news conglomerate.

Roy routinely sacrifices his children as they plot their own Machiavellian manoeuvres against him – and each other – to try to win control of the firm in a caustic exploration of wealth, power and politics. The series, a satirical comedy drama broadcast by HBO, has drawn comparisons, strongly denied by its creator, The Thick of It writer Jessie Armstrong, with US media tycoon Rupert Murdoch.

But there is no doubt the two men bear similarities, as does the actor behind Logan’s brash, irascible and foul- mouthed performance.

Dundee’s most famous export certainly doesn’t mince his words about his real- life brood when asked if his brutal treatment of his eldest onscreen son, Kendall, in the series two finale – we won’t spoil here – puts him beyond redemption as a father.

“No, not at all,” he counters in his distinctive voice. “The point is, he’s his son, and he does love him. You see, you can love your children but you don’t always necessarily like them.”

For a millisecond, I wonder if he’s about to go full Logan Roy on me but then he dissolves into an infectious hoarse giggle.

“I have problems with my own kids,” he continues. “I love them but I don’t like everything they do. They’re very opinionated little b****** s.”

Cox, 74, four children in total. Actor Alan and producer Margaret from his first marriage, plus younger sons Orson, 18, and Torin, 15, by his second wife Nicole Ansari, with whom he lives in upstate New York.

Both younger sons are studying drama and Cox is supportive of the decision. “It’s a tough job, it’s full of horrible rejection and all of that but it can also be a wonderful thing to do,” he says.

It’s easy to understand his positivity given he’s at the pinnacle of a prestigious career. After a lengthy stint at the Royal Shakespeare Company, winning rave reviews for, among others, his portrayal of King Lear, plus two Olivier awards for Rat in the Skull and Titus Andronicus, he made a successful switch to Hollywood 25 years ago.

“I knew there was no point in trying to be what I was in the UK, which was a leading classical actor,” he reflects. “I thought, ‘ What will work is if I’m a character actor’.”

HIS subsequent stellar resumé includes The Bourne Trilogy, X- Men 2, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Braveheart. And, among others, Nuremberg, Deadwood and War and Peace on the small screen.

In 1986, he played an understated version of Dr Hannibal Lector in Manhunter, four years before Anthony Hopkins.

And his Winston Churchill in Churchill ( 2017) was generally considered the best thing about the movie.

But it is Succession that has made him the actor of the moment. At the Golden Globes, Leonardo DiCaprio pleaded to work with him and f ellow A- listers Elton John and Brad Pitt lined up for a cozy chat. “It was an

DRAMA: In Bay Of Silence with Olga Kurylenko amazing experience,” Cox acknowledges.

Such plaudits could make anyone’s head mushroom but Cox seems far too wise and down- to- earth for that. He’s funny, frank, and intensely charismatic. And what he does share from personal experience is that most actors he meets are “egalitarian”, not the ego- centric stars Hollywood machine spawns.

As if to demonstrate his argument, he launches into a memory about his time on the 1999 baseball film, For Love of the Game, starring Kevin Costner in the lead role. At the time, despite his epic Waterworld flop four years earlier, Costner was still one of the decade’s biggest and bankable actors.

Cox was quietly preparing for a 10- minute scene with Costner when the film’s director Sam Raimi, who has since directed the Spider- Man trilogy, cornered him in his dressing room and proceeded to outline how he should behave in the presence of so- called film royalty.

“You’ve got to realise Kevin is a movie star and there’ll be certain things,” recalls Cox of Raimi’s speech. Therein, he recalled, followed lots of “blah, blah, blah”. Yet when the time came for the rehearsal in a New York hotel suite, the two actors met for about an hour.

They practised their lines and talked through the scenes. It went swimmingly well. “Kevin was delightful, absolutely delightful,” recalls Cox. He was not surprised. But it was Raimi’s flustered reaction afterwards that proved amusing. “I came back to the my trailer and he sort of burst in and said, ‘ Well, what happened?’ I said, ‘ What do you mean what happened?’ He said, ‘ With Kevin? What did you do?’ I said, ‘ What do you mean what did I do?’

“He said, ‘ Well Kevin was so – so natural with you. So there’s no problem?’ I said, ‘ You know, Sam. Have you ever thought of just treating Kevin as an actor and not as a movie star? Because you will get more out of somebody because that’s all he is’.”

In recent months, Cox has led a quieter life at home during lockdown amid the Covid- 19 pandemic. He contracted coronavirus, but fortunately only a mild form, and has been working on smaller projects while the larger industry ground to a halt.

One film ready to go is psychological mystery The Bay of Silence, due to be released digitally at the end of the month. Cox plays Milton the shadowy father of Rosalind, played by Quantum of Solace Bond girl Olga Kurylenko, whose whirlwind marriage to Will – Dracula’s Claes Bang – unravels after she gives birth.

“It’s an old- fashioned thriller,” Cox says of the Hitchcock- esque plotline that delves into sexual abuse and past trauma. He was brought on to the

MEDIA TYCOON: Cox as Logan Roy, and above, with the cast of Succession. Left, Cox as Titus Andronicus in the eponymous Shakespeare play in 1987

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