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IAN SPELLING
NYT Syndicate
In the course of a career now spanning more than 50 years, Brian Cox has played honourable men, horrible men and everything in between. He's portrayed historical figures and fictional characters: Henry II of England, Leon Trotsky, Hermann Goring, Dr Hannibal Lecktor, Colonel William Stryker and Sir Matt Busby all come to mind.
Having invested himself in them and in the dozens of other characters he's played on stage, on television and in the movies, he's concluded that the human race is endlessly contradictory in its, well ... everything.
"We're contradictory in our manifestation," the 70-year-old Scottish actor said in his deep, resonant voice, speaking by telephone from somewhere in London."There's so many elements to what makes up the human psyche. It's very hard to keep up with them, and to understand that everybody comes from a point of view, no matter how bad they seem.
"They have a point of view, a point of departure, if you like, or a point of arrival that they come to," he said."It's fascinating to me that human beings behave in such diverse ways and for diverse reasons. Some are cursed by their backgrounds, some are cursed by their ambitions and some are cursed by their conditions.
"And then some are the opposite," Cox continued."Some are enhanced by their background. Some are confirmed by their condition. It's incredible. It's like a roller coaster, what the human being is capable of, and, I suppose, over the years I've discovered that nothing is predictable about human behaviour."
Which brings us to Winston Churchill. Cox plays the iconic British prime minister in the new drama Churchill. The film, opened on June 2, a day after the actor's 71st birthday, is not a biopic, per se, but rather follows Churchill in the final hours before the D-Day invasion of Normandy by the Allied forces in 1944.
Aged, feisty and doubted by many around him, who consider him out of touch and past his prime, the 69-year-old Churchill fully realises that history will judge him on the invasion's results. Other figures around him include his supportive wife, Clementine (Miranda Richardson), Gen Dwight D Eisenhower (John Slattery) and King James VI (James Purefoy).
"I think he was certainly ambitious," Cox said."Churchill is one of the few characters you can truly describe as a man of destiny. He was a man whose life had developed true meaning as a result of the Second World War, and he became this phenomenal leader, having been through a pretty horrible First World War, when he made great errors, particularly in relationship to Gallipoli. They were errors which he lived with, and he served his time.
"He went back to the front and became a soldier again," the actor said."Also he'd made political errors. He misjudged my hometown, because he was the MP of Dundee and he misjudged the effect on the Irish community in that town, particularly of the setting-up of the six counties and also the amount of loss that occurred during the First World War and the rise in alcoholism as a result.
"I think Churchill not only learned from his mistakes, but he came into his own with his anti-fascism stance," he continued."(Prime Minister Neville) Chamberlain was in a state of appeasement with Hitler, and Churchill had a clear understanding of what was going on with Hitler, who had scapegoated the Jewish nation. He knew Chamberlain was being sold a bill of goods by this fanatical man, Hitler. Chamberlain was prime minister until 1940, and then clearly there was a new leadership needed, and Churchill provided it."
During his own youth, Cox recalled, the people of Dundee didn't particularly care for Churchill. After all, he had changed parties ” from Conservative to Liberal to"Constitutionalist" and then back to Conservative ” and thus was considered untrustworthy by many. Cox used the term"mixed bag" to describe his own, personal feelings toward Churchill, who died in 1965 at the age of 90.
"I think on closer examination you understand why he changed parties, because of what was going on in relationship to the trials and tribulations of the time," Cox said."I was a postwar baby, but from my parents' point of view he'd led us through something which was quite extraordinary, and I don't think anybody could have done it but him, at least as a war prime minister."
Cox laughed.
"He was ornery and charismatic," Cox said,"but the thing to me that sums up Churchill was ... and I don't mean this in any way derogatorily, so don't take it the wrong way, but they say all babies look like Churchill, and Churchill looks like all babies. That was because of his mien ” but, interestingly enough, he shared the best qualities of babies, which are excitement, enthusiasm and ... and his cigar-smoking was a kind of thumb-sucking, I think.
"That was all, in many ways, his saving grace," the actor said."Churchill had a wonderful, childish sense of humour as well. He was quite funny and didn't take himself overly seriously, but he was overly serious about what he believed.
"Also, I should tell you that there was something else very human about the Churchill that I saw in that script for this movie," Cox continued."You see the contrast between his private persona and his public persona. How he spoke in person and in private was different. There was a sort of tragic element to him. That's the element that, really, I was interested in. I was interested in the man beneath."
Never one to sit idle, Cox will follow Churchill with the comedy Super Troopers 2 and a drama, Etruscan Smile, which co-stars Thora Birch and Treat Williams, as well as the HBO series Succession, with Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook and Jeremy Strong. That diversity exemplifies his predisposition to do whatever catches his fancy at a given moment. Mix in acting on stage and occasionally directing theatre as well, and it adds up to a considerable legacy.
"I always stand by the old adage, the Shakespeare adage of holding the mirror up to nature," Cox said."I have been very lucky. I've been very lucky just in terms of working with a huge number of wonderfully young directors at the beginning of their career, like Wes Anderson, Spike Jonze, and I've worked with the Wolfgang Petersons and Bryan Singers. I've done some extraordinary indie films, like 'L.I.E' (2001), and played some extraordinary characters.
"I have nothing to complain about."
