Brian Cox taking a break from media empire to tackle LBJ
tices by listening to LBJ’s White House tapes. A follow-up to the Tony-winning “All the Way,” which starred Bryan Cranston as Johnson, Robert Schenkkan’s nearly threehour play charts the president’s final years in office as the war in Vietnam escalates and undermines his progressive domestic legacy. In November, Cox appeared in the film “The Etruscan Smile” as a cantankerous, terminally ill Scotsman who bonds with his infant grandson. breakdown, and a lot of it was to do with what was going on in his life, but also the pressure of that was hovering over you.
A: No, not really. I didn’t know about it to be honest. I’ve been so busy. I had kind of vague memories that Bryan Cranston had played LBJ.
A: The toughest one and the most challenging one was in a film called “L.I.E.” I played Big John, a man who was a pederast. People kept saying, “You don’t want to do that.” He had developed this relationship with this boy who he was initially physically attracted to, but then it became something else. And I found that fascinating. It was tough because (writerdirector Michael Cuesta) had to get this balance between this predator and at the same time this carer. It was astonishing, difficult … challenging — and rightly so, you know?
A: I don’t think he is. He’s a sort of mystery wrapped up in an enigma. There are doors that he’s closed throughout his life and he’s not allowing them to open. But the thing that’s absolutely important to understand — it was the thing that I was doubting until I talked to the genius Jesse Armstrong (“Succession’s” creator-showrunner) — I said, “Does he love his children?” And he said, “He most certainly loves his children. He just doesn’t express it very well.”
My father died when I was 8. My mother was institutionalized. I really had no parents after the age of about 9.
That’s why I personally found fatherhood really rather impossible ’cause there’s no template for me. I’ve never known how to behave.