I meet Brian Cox at his flat in north London, where he spends a shade under half of his time. The rest of the time, in recent years anyway, he lives in New York (one house in Brooklyn, another upstate) where the hit series Succession, in which he plays the patriarch Logan Roy, is filmed. Succession is part way through shooting its fourth season, due for broadcast next year. Will there be a fifth? “I don’t know. No one’s had their contracts renewed. Who knows how long it will go on? We don’t want it to overstay its welcome, like Billions; that’s past its sell-by date. That will not happen with our show.” Meanwhile, Cox has a book out, the paperback version of his delightfully candid memoir.
Rather too candid, he has since reflected: the new edition carries an addendum qualifying his earlier critiques of Johnny Depp, Ed Norton and Michael Caine. No apology for his excoriation of Steven Seagal, though, I notice. “I wouldn’t waste my energy,” he tells me as we settle on his small balcony overlooking Primrose Hill. “He was perfectly nice to me. It’s just his value system — he’s about as Buddhist as my arse.”
As for Depp, whom he thinks is overrated, he concedes that “the public love him”. And the jury did too, didn’t they? “Well, they did,” he rumbles, the Dundonian tone undimmed by decades away from his home town. “I feel sorry for the woman. I think she got the rough end of it.” Caine commands admiration as “an institution” and for “being true to his class”.
He tells me that Ian McKellen, also dissed in the hardback, is “a sweetheart, nicer as he’s got older. He’s just not my favourite actor. I’m going up to Edinburgh [our interview takes place during the festival] and he’s got his Hamlet on. I’ve heard it’s awful.” Branching into politics, Rishi Sunak is “a wassock”, the government is “a bunch of wassocks”, and Vladimir Putin is “an idiot”. Cancel culture is “a load of bollocks. Disgraceful.”
If all this makes it sounds as if Cox doesn’t have to stretch himself to play the nasty old misanthrope Logan Roy, that would be misleading. While he admits that he shares his character’s “deep disappointment with the human experiment”, he is no cynic, nor even, at 76, a grumpy old man. His opinions on fellow actors are far more often celebratory than critical. Sean Bean, Damian Lewis, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Courtenay, Laura Linney, Matthew Goode, Tobias Menzies, Robert Downey Jr, Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves, Tom Hanks and Adrian Dunbar all receive his effusive approval. Cox is by no means a curmudgeon, he just says what he thinks, and what he thinks is generally more positive than negative. Just not always.
Advertisement
Does he like Logan? “I do. I do. I understand him. He’s a total bastard, but I understand him. I wish I had more Logan in me. The story is King Lear really, except Logan inherited nothing. He’s a self-made man and I identify with him for that reason.” Cox has come a long way from his family’s two-room tenement in postwar Dundee. “He’s given up on humanity, except he still loves his kids. He can’t show it because it’s not being shown to him. There’s a mystery to him, this other side that we never see and we never will see because he’s not interested in showing it. I love that aspect to it. I do empathise with Logan a lot.” But Cox is not a bastard in real life? “Not at all.”
Lewis (an Etonian) and Cumberbatch (a Harrovian) crop up when I ask for his take on how the postwar social mobility from which his generation of working-class actors benefited has ended. “Damian, Benedict, they’re perfectly nice lads, but my take is we haven’t got over feudalism in this country. That time in the Sixties, after the sacrifices made through both wars and the depression, was extraordinary. We were given the opportunity, the advantage. I was very much welcomed. We all were. It’s sad to see all that opportunity evaporate.” Once staunch Labour, Cox has decamped to the SNP. “I don’t like the word nationalist. I’m a socialist. But we Scots have had a raw deal for too long.”
He started work at Dundee Rep aged 14 before — already a member of Equity — getting into Lamda at 17, and contrasts the decline of local rep companies (although Dundee’s is still going) with the drama facilities available in top private schools. “The equipment they’ve got is like a London theatre, with experienced theatre types teaching and directing. I had that training in local theatre, which isn’t available so much these days.”
That said, Cox thinks actors can still learn their trade more easily in Britain than in the States. That’s partly why he admires Pitt and Reeves so much. “They could only learn on the job. They’ve transcended the heart-throb thing, dedicated themselves and learnt the craft. I applaud them.” He absolutely loves his trade, does Cox, on stage and screen. He watches Turner Classic Movies avidly to keep learning from the greats: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart. Long after my allotted time has expired, we’re swapping recommendations for films made 70 or 80 years ago, but also for TV series broadcast last year. He’s up to date, sharp, serious. He also listens politely, which is not always the case with the famous, particularly famous older men.
He respects hard work above all else. At drama school as the Sixties got underway, he wasn’t much one for parties or, later, hell-raising in the Peter O’Toole/Oliver Reed/Richard Burton style. “I was there to work. I’d had such a chaotic childhood, I didn’t let it all hang out. I’d let it all hang out between the ages of eight and 15.” Cox’s dad, a shopkeeper, died of pancreatic cancer when his son was eight. His mother had mental health problems. He was brought up by his three older sisters, all still alive, at 92, 90 and 88. His brother died some years ago.
Advertisement
Unlike many of his countrymen and contemporaries described in his memoir, Cox was never seduced by drink, not in his youth and not now. Nor has he ever smoked, “apart from the weed”, which he discovered late in life. “Oh yeah, I love the weed, but only last thing at night, and not every night.” He’s not ascetic, but he is self-disciplined. “My health is pretty good. Apart from the fact I’m diabetic. Which is my own stupid fault because I like sweet things.” He could reverse his diabetes if he lost weight. “I’ve lost quite a bit. I go to the gym every other day. I was a trencherman. I love food. Now I’m careful.”
Cox looks out along the street and breaks off. “Oh, there’s my daughter. She’s arriving in her car. Actually, it’s my car, but I don’t drive it anymore. It’s a Prius.” Cox has four children. With his first wife, Caroline, he had Margaret (who pops on to the balcony to say hello) and Alan, both in their fifties. After they divorced, he had two more sons with his second wife, Nicole Ansari, an actress. Orson is 20, Torin is 17. “They’re terribly tall, 6ft 4in and 6ft 3in. I’m 5ft 8in, just about, and my wife is petite as well. It’s weird we’ve got these giant boys.”
In his book, Cox gives himself a hard time for not being a great father to his two older children. “I wasn’t a monster, but I could have been better. You can’t accomplish everything with your children. As long as you love them and as long as you show them that love . . . That’s Logan’s problem. He’s not shown them love because he doesn’t know how to do it. He does love them.”
Margaret comes back with the coffee. “Hello, darling,” says her dad. “What time do you want to leave?” It turns out that Margaret is involved in staging a new Ukrainian play at the Finborough Theatre, a small venue in west London. Her brother Alan is in it. Partly through his older kids, Cox seems still to be intimately involved with and supportive of British theatre. For instance, he knows chapter and verse about Hull Truck, the company in my home city. He is also committed to the Ukrainian cause, having lived and taught in Moscow 30 years ago, around the break-up of the Soviet Union. Many of his former pupils are now powerful figures in the arts in Russia. “Some of them have had to come out in support of the invasion. It’s very distressing.”
Unlike some on the traditional left, Cox has no sympathy for the Russian aggression. And unlike many men of his advancing years, he has no misgivings about the backlash against male sexual harassment, particularly rife in his industry. “I had a bad feeling about Weinstein. He gave me the creeps. Anything that’s predatory towards women, I just find it awful. I grew up in a very matriarchal society; the jute weavers in Dundee were all women. I do think we need to have a conversation about the basis of modern courtship. My eldest son has been with the same girl since he was 16. They adore one another. The youngest boy, I can see it’s awkward for him. How does he approach a young woman? And of course it gets nuts with all the he/she pronoun stuff.”
Advertisement
● Brian Cox and Nicole Ansari-Cox on marriage, sex and Succession
As and when Succession wraps, he’ll move on to the next project. “You don’t retire.” He doesn’t need the money. He does voiceovers for McDonald’s adverts in the States. “That pays very well. I want to do more writing. A follow-up to the book. And I’m making a documentary about money, the wealth gap. I did some filming at these kitchen larders in Dundee; people pay a bit to keep their dignity. This guy comes in, he’s there collecting for people in the high rises who can’t get out. And he’s blind! Blind! I thought, ‘This is a hero.’ It’s humbling.”
Lots of people say similar things about the less fortunate, but I think Cox truly means them. He’s grounded. He knows he’s a lucky boy, he knows things could easily have been different for him, coming from where he did, and he is duly grateful, while profoundly wishing the world was a more equitable place than it is. He isn’t a bit like Logan Roy, not really.
Putting the Rabbit in the Hat: My Autobiography by Brian Cox is published by Quercus
