From Lear’s crown to Ahab’s leg, Brian Cox has some great stories of stage disasters
The Succession star tells Stephen Colbert that a 60-year acting career's going to include a few mishaps
TV News Brian Cox
Introduced by Stephen Colbert as Succession’s “patriarch we love to hate,” Brian Cox proved actually pretty lovable as he regaled his host with stories of his own father and mother. Speaking of his recent, bracingly honest autobiography Putting The Rabbit In The Hat, in which the 75-year-old acting legend shares the story of his life along with some unsparing evaluations of his fellow actors, Cox revealed that his own father was essentially the anti-Logan Roy.
“My dad was a very, very good, pious man,” Cox said of his late father, Chick, who died at 51, when Cox was eight. Calling his post-WWII Scottish childhood one marked by “mistakes made in goodness,” Cox also recalled how, after his first TV appearance in 1965, his mother Molly actually went door-to-door in their home town of Dundee, gathering signatures to force the BBC to give her boy some more airtime. “No, I think we can make some movement for you,” is how Cox fondly remembers his mom’s very mom-like efforts on his behalf.
Colbert pulled out an early headshot from those days, accurately calling the 23-year-old Cox a “smokeshow.” And while Cox demurred at the compliment, Colbert is not wrong, with the smoldering, ruddy-faced young Cox bringing some Oliver Reed/Albert Finney-style bad boy heat. Crediting Finney’s role in 1960s working class drama Saturday Night And Sunday Morning for teaching a young Scottish would-be actor that a career in the pictures was possible, Cox certainly has built up his own impressively long and varied resumé since. (As evidence, might we suggest checking out his 1980 episode of anthology series Hammer House Of Horror, where his ex-convict is trapped in a homemade zoo by former concentration camp guard Peter Cushing. Check streaming for availability. You’re welcome.)
Asked by Colbert for a few other memorably weird occurrences from his legendary stage and screen career, Cox was happy to share. There was the time when, as King Lear, a dramatic crown-toss went astray, slicing open the forehead of a nice lady in the front row. And the time when, playing the notoriously peg-legged Captain Ahab to a packed house, he was forced to improvise an exit after his carefully gimmicked fake leg fell off right at center stage. Showing that his disdain for certain actors he’s worked with also extends to the poor sods who get paid to write about his performances, Cox mocked the Times reviewer who praised the thematic brilliance of Cox’s Ahab continuing on with his whale-hunting mania despite his artificial leg falling off. “Bollocks,” Cox said, waving his hands at the overreaching silliness of pop culture critics everywhere.
12 Comments
So, Brian’s seen some……shenanigans.
I swear to god I’m going to pistol whip the next person that says shenanigans!
Fuck G/O Media.
A question for the gallery: If I have my adblockers turned up to 11, and I don’t click on any of the dozens of “Inventory” ads they have hiding as articles around the site, does G/O Media still make money somehow off of me making dumb jokes on articles and refreshing every five minutes to see if anyone starred it?
Yes, unfortunately. They’ll tell prospective advertisers “look how many hits a day our articles get, you should pay to advertise on our site”. They’re selling the views as well as the clicks. Also while I’m posting I’d like to take the opportunity to say G/O Media abuses its employees and Spanfeller and Great Hill Partners ruin everything they touch and can go fuck themselves with a mature barrel cactus. Best of luck to all the staff of AV Club who deserve so much better and who should absolutely join the former Deadspin staff at Defector if that’s an option.
So where are cool people going?
Personally I’m just going to use Internet Archives Wayback Machine to re-read ComicsAlliance articles from 2015 and pretend like none of the last 7 years has happened. Can’t wait to see what they have to say about the new Avengers: Age of Ultron movie!
I swear to God, I’m going to pistol whip the next guy who says “The Avocado.”
Hey, I was eating this guacamole, but I think the avocado might not have been quite ripe yet. So, what are you guys talking about?
We’ll miss you, Perkins.(Not just because you’re leaving but because so are we.)
It’s true. I’ve been popping by as one does visiting a wake.
A quote from the inestimable thespian featured in this article sounds fitting in these awful times of corporate power gone mad:“To the death of fun.”