SUCCESSION STAR ON GROWING WEALTH GAP
It is just two years since Brian Cox picked up his best actor Golden Globe for his role in hit drama Succession. And, by his own admission, he’s more famous and well off today than at any point in his impressive 60-year career.
Few in his position – aged 76 and at the peak of his success – would be too worried about the possibility of finding themselves penniless.
But Brian, who overcame a povertystricken childhood to become one of the world’s finest stage actors and a Hollywood favourite, admits he has a “constant fear of becoming poor again”.
It’s one of the reasons why the actor – best-known as the foul-mouthed billionaire media mogul Logan Roy in Sky’s drama – decided to front a documentary about society’s complicated relationship with wealth.
How The Other Half Live, which starts tomorrow, is a three-part Channel 5 series in which Brian investigates the growing wealth gap across the world, particularly in the UK and his adopted home, the United States.
But it is also a deeply personal journey as he goes back to the Dundee home where, aged eight, his shopkeeper dad died from pancreatic cancer at just 51, plunging the family into poverty.
In the series, the actor visit the homes of the super-rich as well as filming moving scenes in soup kitchens and foodbanks. It is even more timely now, as the cost of living crisis pushes millions more into poverty.
Brian says the painful memories of living below the breadline have meant he is both uncomfortable with money, and afraid of having it taken away.
“It never leaves you,” he says. “It’s like the Damoclean sword that hangs over you throughout your entire life.
“I never really felt it much when I was young, I was a kid and just got on with it, I was literally surviving. But as I got older I’d look at that boy and think, my God, he survived, how did he do it? And it’s still a mystery to me.”
Describing money as his “own personal demon”, he adds: “After my father died, my mother discovered his bank account had £10 in it. We were destitute. My mother only had a widow’s pension, which would often run out before the end of the week. So I’d go to the fish and chip shop and ask if they had any scraps – the bits of batter at the bottom of the fryer – and take them home for us to eat.
“I had a very happy life until my dad died. He would stand me on the coal bunker and had me doing Al Jolson impersonations. It was my first stage.”
Brian, whose impassioned rant against then-Prime Minister Liz Truss’s policies on BBC’s Question Time last month caused a sensation, believes he inherited his leftleaning politics from his dad, whose grocery store was known for looking after the local community by giving them “tick” – or credit.
“My dad was very sweet and kind and a real socialist,” he says.
“Last year, an 80-year-old man came to me and said, ‘I remember your dad very well, I used to go into his shop as a little boy, he was so kind to me and so
I’ve been able to use my voice ... I hope he’d be happy with it
caring about what I was going to do with my life.
“I just thought, that’s such a wonderful legacy he left. There was always a conflict with my mother, though.
“She thought he was far too generous, and she was probably right. She would say charity begins at home.”
The youngest of four children, Brian left school aged 14 to earn £4 a week acting at the Dundee Rep.
Aged 17, he left home when he got a grant to study at renowned drama school LAMDA in London. After two years at the Birmingham Rep, he made
BRIAN COX ON HIS FATHER’S LEGACY
his West End debut in 1967 as Orlando in As You Like It. He also established himself as an accomplished Shakespearean actor, spending seasons with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre and winning two Laurence Oliver awards.
But it was in the mid-1990s that Brian shot to superstardom, thanks to roles in big budget movies like Rob Roy and Braveheart, followed by hits such as The Bourne Identity, The Ring and opposite Brad Pitt in Troy.
Brian, who now lives in New York, believes his rise to the top was down to both his own ambition and a British welfare state which nurtured it
He says: “I had this intention about what I wanted to do with my life from an early age. In that way I’m incredibly blessed, a lot of people don’t have that.
“I managed to get a grant to go to drama school from the Scottish Education Authority, all expenses paid. And I did rather well, I was able to be free to study my craft.
“Nowadays, everybody had to pay for it. What happened to the state that prided itself on welfare? It has constantly been undermined by successive Tory governments.
“It’s a tragedy, you look at the world and you think why have we f***ed it up so much? It’s greed, and not even conscious greed, it’s mindless greed.”
Most of Brian’s musings inevitably stray to his political views and frustration with the state of our country.
A once-staunch Labour supporter who even voiced party political broadcasts for Tony Blair, he moved away from the party because of the 2003 Iraq war, and in 2012 switched to supporting Scottish independence.
But he insists he would never stand for election, saying: “I make certain political stances but it’s not who I am, I’m only political in the sense of common welfare, that’s what I believe in. I wouldn’t stand for election because I don’t want to be part of the idiocy that goes on.”
And he thinks his dad would have been proud of him for using his voice to speak up for social justice. “He would have felt that he had made a good kid, that his kid did something.
“I’ve been lucky to be able to use my voice and contribute to my society. I hope he’d be happy with it.”
Brian, who has two grown-up children from his first marriage, and two teenage sons, Orson and Torin, with actress Nicole Ansari, whom he married in 2002, says he has tried to instil the same values in his kids.
Success continues to follow him into his eighth decade. This year, he was nominated for an outstanding lead actor Emmy for Logan Roy, a part that has made him synonymous with one particular obscene catchphrase. He says: “People are always very nice, and of course they always want me to tell them to f*** off. And that is one of the greatest things you can say.
“I was really tired the other day in the airport and someone came and sat beside me. I was just too exhausted to engage, so I just said, ‘No thank you, thank you but no thank you, and f*** off.’ And he went away very happy!”
He adds: “Logan is just a stop on the journey, not the end of the journey. I hope I can keep on going.”
Brian Cox: How The Other Half Live, tomorrow, 9pm on Channel 5.