Michael Alexander speaks to Dundee-born Hollywood actor Brian Cox about his autobiography which charts his extraordinary life story from poverty to international fame.
It’s been described as a rags-to-riches story like no other.
A seminal autobiography that captures Brian Cox’s journey from growing up in poverty in Lochee to the red carpets of Hollywood.
But while the 75-year-old acting legend has spoken previously about the importance of knowing family history, it’s only when he came to write his memoir, Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, that he realised how tough his own childhood years had been.
“My childhood was extremely tough, but I didn’t realise how hard at the time,” explains Brian in an interview with The Courier.
“I lost my dad when I was eight. My mum had a series of nervous breakdowns.
“She had electric shock treatment and difficulty with her memory and didn’t recover very well. She was always slightly eccentric but she became even more eccentric.
“It was tough, but I didn’t even know it was tough. I realised when writing this book – ‘Jesus Christ what a childhood I’ve got’.
“But that’s just the way it was. You just had to do it.”
Devoted to sisters
Brian talks fondly of his elder sisters who “looked out” for him as a child.
Sadly, his brother Charlie, who had a shop in Monifieth, has passed away.
It was only when he was recording the audio part of his book, however, that he realised how tough those times had been – particularly for his brother.
“I had a wee bit of a break down because I had not realised how tough it was on my brother,” he says.
“He was only 16 and in many ways an eight year old was much more resilient.
“A 16 year old was going through all kind of hormones and getting big, and it was a tough tough time for him, but you’d never have known it.
“My sister describes the time that my brother ate this orange, and it was the way he peeled it and the fact he was crying and covering up his crying peeling this orange.
She told me this story, and I just thought ‘wow’. When I spoke that it just hit me.”
Book launch events
Brian is in good form when The Courier catches up with him for a chat on the phone.
He’s in a St Andrews hotel having done a book launch event the night before, and is looking ahead to the “onslaught” of further events in Edinburgh, Glasgow then Dundee.
It’s more than 30 years since he wrote his first book Salem to Moscow: An Actor’s Odyssey.
It charted his career at that time from his days at Dundee Rep to a journey which culminated in directing Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” at the Moscow Art Theatre school, then in the throes of Gorbachev’s thaw.
Having thought then that one day he’d need to write about his life “properly”, he was recently commissioned to write Putting the Rabbit in the Hat. He started writing in February, finding time between shootings of Succession.
Describing the process as an “incredible workload”, he decided he wanted to make the book a “kind of conversation” – a conversation that “went off at tangents” then would come back to the subject.
“Someone years and years ago said you should always write as you speak,” he says.
Acting career
As an actor with the reputation for playing fearsome figures ranging from Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter, Col. Stryker in X2: X-Men United to, more recently, bullish, cutthroat and ruthless media magnate Logan Roy in Succession, the book shares stories of many stars of stage and screen he has gained as friends and colleagues along the way.
Perhaps inevitably, many of the media interviews so far have picked up on sections of the book where he throws certain well known names under the bus.
He doesn’t shy away from expressing his personal and harsh views on major Hollywood stars such as Johnny Depp, Steven Seagal and Quentin Tarantino, among others.
However, when this is mentioned to Brian – and I admit I’m at a disadvantage because I’ve not yet seen a copy of his book – he replies: “It’s interesting you’ve picked up on that because that’s not the book! I’ve had the Johnny Depp flack and folk saying ‘who are you? Nobody knows who you are!’
“And I’m saying ‘I don’t disrespect anybody’. But they don’t get it, because they maybe look at the margin and say ‘where’s the bit about Johnny Depp?’ But that’s not the book, that’s just part of the book.”
‘Complicated relationship’
Brian is regarded as an actor of unparalleled distinction and versatility.
His road to stardom was paved after joining the Dundee Repertory Theatre as a teenager.
However, after years of graft, Manhattan-based Brian has never forgotten his roots and, while admitting he has a “complicated relationship” with the city of Dundee, he still feels very strongly about his home city – particularly the continued rates of poverty.
“We still have a big heroin situation in Dundee,” he reflects.
“We’ve gone now into fourth and sometimes fifth generation.
“It is to do with deprivation, and there’s an element of deprivation that’s still not been solved.
“The city looks fabulous, the V&A looks fabulous and wonderful, but the hinterland still needs looking at. We really need to take care of our people.”
Brian also notes there’s been an issue with pensions amongst staff at Dundee University, where he was rector, adding: “I know it’s been tough (for the university) because of the considerable lack of funds, but it’s no good to punish the workers and deprive them.
“I’m glad the city council has stepped into the piece and said this is not fair. It cannot happen. These pensions cannot be attacked.
“Because these ignominious things keep happening time and time again, and it’s always the poor person, the weaker person who’s attacked. We’ve got to stop it.”
Grateful for Succession
In Succession, Cox plays Logan Roy – the Dundee-born founder and CEO of the media conglomerate Waystar Royco and is the patriarch of The Roy Family.
Brian says it’s “hard to say” if any of his real life Dundee experiences have helped him play Logan.
“We’re very different,” he says thoughtfully.
“He’s misanthropic. He’s a pessimist, I’m an optimist, although we do share a mutual disappointment with the human experiment. It’s pretty bad. It’s at an all time low. Whereas I believe we’ll come through it, in the words of Logan, I don’t think he gives a f*ck!”
Brian says when playing Logan he takes into account and understands the character’s own “tortured history”.
But whereas Logan’s experience of returning to Dundee was “really traumatic”, when Brian goes back to Dundee it’s the opposite.
“I grow to admire the city more and more and the courage of the city, the courage of the way the people have addressed the town, which is very impressive,” he says.
Freedom of the city?
The day before this interview, Bob Servant creator Neil Forsyth suggested in a Courier opinion column that “now, surely, is the time that Dundee City Council should give Brian the freedom of the city”.
Opinion: Time to give Hollywood hero Brian Cox freedom of Dundee
Asked what he thought of this suggestion – coming just two years after he came top in The Courier’s Impact 100 countdown – Brian says that if he was ever to be offered the freedom of his home city, it would be the “icing on an incredible cake”.
“It would be a wonderful thing,” he adds. “An absolutely wonderful thing.”
Brian says that while he has a “complicated relationship” with Dundee, at the end of the day it’s the folk and the city he loves.
While it’s been called the City of Discovery, he thinks it should be called the “City of Survival” because it’s been through so much.
Bob Servant
Mr Cox said doing Neil Forsyth’s Bob Servant was for him “one of the great things to do”.
TV shows in Scotland have often tended to be Glasgow-based.
However, Brian reckons Dundonians are much “crazier and more surreal” with their humour.
“That’s what I think Neil captures brilliantly,” he added.
“In fact friends of Neil thought Bob was based on my brother Charlie.
“He was quite an eccentric my brother – sadly no longer with us.
“Everybody said ‘oh that’s Charlie Cox’. He said ‘no I never met Charlie Cox, although I would like Brian Cox to play him’.
“That’s actually what I did, I channelled my brother, because my brother used to do these extraordinary things.”
Views on COP26
A socialist and Scottish independence supporter, and acknowledging the connection between climate change and global economic imbalance, Brian says world leaders at COP26 needed to address the “deep problem” of saving the planet against the balancing act of economic survival.
Surreally, just hours after this interview concludes, a Tweet from the official Bob Servant Twitter account denies that Bob “flashed” US president Joe Biden when his motorcade travelled to Glasgow!
Stop sending me this, I was at the bowling and I can prove it. https://t.co/y2M1SLJXCb
— Bob Servant (@bobservant) November 2, 2021
When it comes to sustaining his own life story, however, Brian says the key is to “keep working”.
“I’m doing a picture after this called The Independent playing this journalist which is a good script,” he says.
“That’s if I can learn my lines. Just learning your lines and not bumping into the furniture – that’s the gig when you are my age,” he laughs.
“But I feel good, I just keep working. I’m so grateful for the success of Succession but you have to be very careful not to let that obfuscate other stuff.
“You’ve just got to keep your head down.
As my old pal Fulton Mackay used to say, just keep saying your prayers Brian!”
*Putting the Rabbit in the Hat: My Autobiography by Brian Cox is out now published in hardback, e-book and audio by Quercus, £20.
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