The actor: Brian Cox, a venerable Scot who's had a thriving career as a stage and television actor in the UK, as well as a successful run as a character actor in American movies. Cox first drew attention Stateside for playing Hannibal Lecktor—before the character had a "k"-ectomy—in Michael Mann's 1986 thriller Manhunter; in recent years, Cox has become even more familiar from his small, key roles in films by formidable directors like Spike Lee and Wes Anderson. Cox can currently be seen doing a rare leading turn in Red, a suspenseful character piece about an honorable man driven to violence when three punk kids shoot his dog.
Nicholas And Alexandra (1971)—"Trotsky"
Brian Cox: That was the first movie I did. Worked with the great Sam Spiegel. I was a young actor doing repertory theater all around England, and in those days, travel was very difficult, but I had to keep going back to meet Spiegel about playing the role. Or a role. I didn't know which role it was going to be. Eventually, I came back from somewhere way in the north of England. It took me six hours to travel, and I had to get back on the train by midday in order to make my evening performance. So I sort of staggered in, so tired, and the director, Frank Schaffner said, "We don't need to see you again, you're in the movie!" And Maude Spector, who was the casting director, said to Spiegel, "Well, you know, it wasn't very clear what you wanted." And Spiegel said to me, "Yes, you're in the movie, you're in the movie, we all know you're in the movie." And I said, "What part am I playing, is it Kerensky or is it Trotsky?" And he said, "Kerensky, Trotsky… You're in the movie!" [Laughs.]
The A.V. Club: Was being on a movie set what you'd imagined it to be?
BC: I'd done TV stuff. I'd actually played Stalin, ironically enough. I think I must be the only British actor who's played both Stalin and Trotsky. I need to play Lenin so I can make it a triptych. [Laughs.] But that Nicholas And Alexandra set was particularly sepulchral, because it was shot by the great cinematographer Freddie Young. Awe-inspiring. He'd done Doctor Zhivago. And he also did Lawrence Of Arabia, which is one of the great movies of all time. So boy, that was something else. Kind of a major piece to be involved in. When we got onto the set, there was a real feel of hush. Very quiet, I've always remembered. One of the quietest films. So I thought, "Oh, this must be what film sets are like."
Manhunter (1986)—"Dr. Hannibal Lecktor"
BC: What happened was, I did a play Off-Broadway called Rat In The Skull, which I'd done in London with Gary Oldman. Brian Dennehy was sort of in the loop to play the role of Hannibal Lecktor, and it was Dennehy who actually recommended me to Michael Mann. He said "The guy who can really play this is Brian Cox. He's at the Public in Rat In The Skull, and you should go see him." Well, Michael didn't go and see me, but the casting agent Bonnie Timmermann came. And at my audition, Bonnie, who is this little bird-like creature, and very sweet, said "You know what I'd really like you to do? I don't want to see you. So do you think you could keep your back to the camera?" And I went, "Yeah, why?" And she said, "Well, when I saw your performance, I was sitting in a bad seat, and for the first 20 minutes, all I could hear was your voice. And I was so intrigued that when I eventually saw you, it was thrilling." So I said, "Oh, okay." So I started the screen test with my back to the camera, and I eventually turned around. Which Michael Mann actually incorporated into the movie.
AVC: Were you disappointed not to be asked to reprise the role in the later films?
BC: It was really strange. I didn't know what was going on. There were some rights issues concerning the character, and it wasn't very clear that the name could be used. So when they first started showing the script for Silence Of The Lambs around, the character had a different name. Tony Hopkins and I, we both had the same agent, and my agent said to me, "You know, Tony's been offered this role in a Jonathan Demme film that sounds very similar to the part you played in Manhunter." And I checked it out and said, "Well, it is the part I played in Manhunter." But by then I was already engaged to do King Lear at the National Theater. And the irony of ironies is that when I had been playing Hannibal Lecktor, Tony had been playing King Lear at the National Theater. It was just a weird juxtaposition of events. Later on, I directed an episode of Oz and I hired Jonathan Demme for a part, which was kind of my way of getting back at him. [Laughs.] But he clearly wanted his own movie, and didn't want anybody from the original at all. Because it wasn't just me that changed. Dennis Farina became Scott Glenn, you know. And I don't have any regrets about it. The only thing I regret is the money.
AVC: And the Oscar?
BC: Oh yeah, I almost forget he got an Oscar for that. Yeah, I always think it was weird he got an Oscar for that. I think Tony is a wonderful actor, and it was his day, and he deserved it. But it's an odd part to get an Oscar for. Did he get the Oscar for Best Actor, or Best Supporting Actor?
AVC: Best Actor.
BC: Wow, that's bizarre. Because when I played Hannibal Lecktor, he was a supporting character. Which is what I thought the strength of it was. I thought once the Hannibal franchise got under way, it got a bit silly, to be honest with you.
Rob Roy (1995)—"Killearn"
BC: Again a great script, and I think a much better script than Braveheart, the other epic film at that time. Though Braveheart struck a lot more bells because of its heroic sensibility, and also because of the sheer feat of what Mel Gibson had done. But I thought Rob Roy was the much better script, and I also thought, from a Scots point of view, that Rob Roy really investigated the nature of a Scottish character that was sort of duplicitous, and the survival mechanism that occurs in the feudal chain. My character, Killearn, was sort of the quintessential fallen angel turned bad guy. It was an interesting character to create. I didn't like being around him. I just didn't like the guy. I thought he was a horrible guy.
AVC: In the '70s and '80s, you didn't do many films, but from Rob Roy on, you've done a lot. What changed in your career?
BC: I'd always wanted to do movies, but if you grow up in these islands—especially where I grew up in these islands—the theatre is very powerful, very potent. It's a part of our heritage. Our culture is really a theatrical culture, not a cinematic culture. Feudal societies don't create great cinema; we have great theatre. The egalitarian societies create great cinema. The Americans, the French. Because equality is sort of what the cinema deals with. It deals with stories which don't fall into "Everybody in their place and who's who," and all that. But the theatre's full of that. Especially in Shakespeare. So in a way, it behooves you as a British actor to try and master the classics and become a classical player. I got caught up in it. It wasn't something I wanted to do, but I was too late.
You see, the free cinema, the cinema of Albert Finney, Peter O'Toole, Alan Bates, Tom Courtenay… That all ended by the time I came along. So I went to work in the Royal Court, because they weren't going to be making any more of those movies. And I did television, because television became our film industry, and it was good. We had a very good standard of television for a very long time. But the standards started to get eroded around… really, the late '80s and early '90s. Meanwhile, I went to America to do Manhunter, and when I came back, I was going through a divorce, and I realized I wanted to stay in the country. So I went and worked at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and I did the majority of my major classical work. Playing Titus Andronicus, playing King Lear, playing Petruchio in The Taming Of The Shrew. I had an amazing time of it. But the movies were always in the back of my mind, hanging around.
Then in the mid-'90s, having done this thing of having a full career, going from television to theatre, I decided I wanted to give the movies a go. Manhunter had become a cult success, and people were saying, "You know, we'd love to see you do more movies." So I moved to America. It was a big thing, because I was nearly 50, but I suddenly thought, "No, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to have my last possible role of the dice, because I'm not a kid." In a way, it was perfect timing, because I hit Hollywood when I was old enough to deal with it. I think if I was a younger actor. I couldn't have dealt with the crap. Cinema isn't what it used to be. It's very hard to create the kind of cinema that I loved, which is the cinema of the '50s, the '60s, and I suppose the early '70s.
But I remember reading a book by Michael Powell, the filmmaker, saying that in films, "There are no big parts and small parts, there are only long parts and short parts." And it was a revelation for me, because it meant that really the concentration is on when you work. It could be a day, it could be five days. The hardest thing to do in movies is be a day-part player. You have to go in, make your mark, and get out. There's a lot of leading actors who are not good for a lot of a movie, and then suddenly they have good moments, and they're like stepping-stones across a particularly feisty stream. They build careers out of that. The politics of it is something else. So when I decided that this is what I wanted to do, and I made the move, I decided that although I was a leading actor in the theatre, I'd be a character actor in movies and take it from there. America's very good in the sense that good will out. In the end, I knew that if I could create some kind of rapport, I'd get my acknowledgement as a film actor.
Rushmore (1998)—"Dr. Nelson Guggenheim"
AVC: Speaking of that Michael Powell line about short roles and long roles, one of your more indelible parts is from a movie you're barely in, Rushmore.
BC: Exactly. I actually went to see Rushmore, and I came late, and I missed myself. [Laughs.] It was great, that scene. I caught that scene the other day on TV, funny enough, the first scene that you see with Jason Schwartzman and myself, where we talk about his grades. That's a brilliant scene, and I have to say, we play it brilliantly. Jason's very intelligent; he's a bright kid. We've got this level of seriousness, as though we were talking about something quite important. And these two men are clearly friends as well, but the kid just isn't cutting the mustard. You know? It's an absolutely wonderful scene.
AVC: It's a crucial scene, not just because you fill the audience in on the lead character's background, but because you let us know he's basically a good kid, and it's okay to root for him. That's what makes the rest of the movie work.
BC: Those kinds of roles can be so key, and a lot of people take them for granted. I was raised on movies where you saw such wonderful character actors, like Jimmy Gleason. There's a marvelous film called The Bishop's Wife, and there's a whole sequence where Gleason is a cab driver who goes skating and does all these kinds of funny pratfalls and stuff. It's a tiny part, but a moment of glory. Movies can do that in a way that no other medium does it, you know? You can save space if you play a role right. I think Hannibal Lecktor's only got three scenes in Manhunter, and yet that part, more and more, people keep seeing it and saying, "Wow, it's extraordinary." I think for Tony, possibly… Well, I don't want to put words in anybody's mouth, because I think he's very grateful for the role, but I also think it's become a bit of an albatross. Because it got blown out of proportion to what it was meant to be, and then it became something else. It became a Grand Guignol turn in a way; it became a shtick. And I didn't like that aspect of it. The great thing about Hannibal is that you don't know anything about him. You don't need to know about him; he's a mysterious guy. It's the mystery that really sells the role. I think once you start tampering with the mystery, you deconstruct it in the wrong way.
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