Actor BRIAN COX on Theater Talk in 1998

[Music] this is theater talk I'm Susan Haskins here with me is my co-host Michael riddle of the New York Daily News I first encountered the great British actor Brian Cox 10 years ago in a production of Titus Andronicus at the RSC in London and it remains to this day one of the most gripping performances I have ever seen mr. Cox has also played King Lear last year he was here in New York doing a terrific play called Saint Nicholas he is now back on Broadway in art and we are delighted tonight to be joined by Brian Cox welcome it's really a thrill for me too for me I'm a great admirer of your work thank you tell us a little bit first about about the play art and how you came to be involved in it why this seems to be a vehicle for all of you terrific actors to be coming in and out of it both here and in London well I think that art was that I saw the previews of it I am ever going to see it in London about two years ago and all the actors are actually old friends of mine at Albert Finney Tom Courtenay can start I've worked with them all and I went to see it and it was on a Sunday afternoon I remember and it was a it was very early stages and it was so just hit the impact of it was so strong and this was before it opened up before he even had reviews right and I it's one of those experience you don't get them too often where you you you look at a play you think oh gosh I wish I had been in that you know and that was very much what that was that was the that was the strength of ours and it was fascinating because the play again as I said was in preview so there were things which are wonderful and working in this and being an act and one knows the game you know there are other things which would need time to settle in and the thing that also struck me was these this production by Matthew warchest this young director young director this incredible rigor that he brought to this sort of symmetrical design this extraordinary you know there are three characters there are three chairs there are three walls and it's it's one set but subtly changes and I just thought the homies old san was fascinating so cut all I mean art becomes a huge success and it's playing and playing and playing and and the producer the main producer is the English producers of course Sean Connery but the guy who sort of runs the show non there's a guy called David pew they hit on this idea of changing it every three months so that you didn't get into this thing which happens in it's probably not the same here but it certainly happens in London where casco for long runs and they tend to get stale and the actors get fed up normally if you sign you send for six months but they thought it was a good idea as they probably did with Tom and Albert and can to sign for short time short period and then they replaced them with equally good casts and casts of sort of current up-and-coming actors actors who are hitting their peak because it really is about it really is a 40-plus play it can't it shouldn't really be played by anybody younger than 40 oh yeah we should say it's about three men one three long time close friends all professional men it's a French play it's written by a woman who is astonishing who has written the most searing cutting look at men I think this is written for a long time and I think it could only be written by a woman and in this play you're one of your close friends he buys a painting although he buys a painting he buys a white painting and this has an effect on my character to this to such as I said he becomes quite apoplectic about this he sees this white painting is a sort of betrayal that the the painting kind of represents the it represents the fabric of the friendship and how fallible the friendship is or how you know is this friendship real what is it based on what what are the you know and it's it's about male what male friendships are based on because male friendships unlike female friendships are based on things which are they kind of male stroke one another in a kind of way whereas females would be I mean the great view argument that play could this play be played my women right well enemy no because women first of all when you talk about partners a woman would immediately go for that their friends partner I mean that they would say why did you marry him they say yeah but it's taken them 15 years to say but and so this was the thing this is the structure of the production we set up and then I was very interested in doing it because I you know I'd now I live now between here in London and I live in Los Angeles and so then I knew the play was going to be coming here and I was really interested and then they said well we're gonna have an American cast which seemed to make a lot of sense with that great American actor Alfred Molina London there's a very strong kind of South London accent does a brilliant American nation so that production happened and of course the thing won the Tony and I was here at the same time I was doing st. Nicholas just along the road at Primary Stages and so I was aware of the high Pope art and then I had this strange premonition I was here doing some Nicolas and also I was doing a pilot for a TV in new TV series which I instinctively knew wasn't gonna go but I knew I was gonna be coming back to New York and it was the weirdest thing and I was actually packing my bags to come back to England to do a film about Mary Queen of Scots and the telephone went and they said would I take over from Alan Alda and art and we hadn't quite done the deal because like all films it wasn't as they say fully green-lighted it was sort of whatever off Greeners so I knew that's what I should be doing when you go to play replace Alan Alda sometimes actors hesitate to to step in after a prominent star has done a role but this doesn't seem to be the case people seem to be had this is precisely what david pewter set up but this is my point that he's actually made it that each cast is equally interesting is the cast that's gone before so it's now become a tradition in art you know and they're now looking for people like Stanley Tucci Cameron Scott Bill Murray there's all kinds of people possibility you know that they're talking to now about possibly taking over as well which would be really interesting I mean so I I think that you know it's it's what's so nice about it it goes back to my old alma mater which was the Royal Court Theatre which was essentially a writer's theater is that the the play is the star and and it just it's a great vehicle for good actors and and you know I got a little note from Alan Alda on the first night just and he pinned a lot when he's mirror and he said this is the best professional experience of my working life which immediately impressed me and then I thought well what about mash but no you know it is that kind of experience what I wanted to talk to you about st. Nicholas do you want a lot of awards last year you and you played a vampire drama critic I played a critic who seduced by a vampire already but there's always sometimes that's a very fine line between vampire sort of look into the psyche of Drama Critics well it's interesting because it's a very empathetic portrait of a drama critic and I was fascinated by this play because nobody had done it nobody had written about the you know I think drama critics are there a curious animal because that they they're sort of marginalized you know I mean I've known because I've been in this business a long time and in England I've known a lot of drama critics over a number of years and you're always on that kind of nodding thing where you kind of say hello a party you go and they always gotta go hello this is kerwin I'd and I've always shined a light on they've right that's right because I think they always feel I said something bad about this person and he's gonna feel this way I mean always that even though it is a professional thing and you you'd get to you get to know that but you know there is it there's something very personal about being an actor and it's not like being a painter or being you're up there and you always feel it's you that's being judged and they always feel perhaps they're judging you in that person may feel bad about it so I I was fascinated and and this came about because the the young right economic person who is probably I think one of the best writers we have at the moment it's got a play coming to town that we are coming in here next year which is the most fantastically beautiful play and he's written a horse user plays been writing since he was 18 but interestingly enough his plays and only are now being successful in his home country which is Ireland and when he started he was got a really rough ride from critics so he started to write this play as a kind of as a surgical sort of you know autopsy of but then he got on to a whole other thing of the the loneliness of the critic the perhaps critics want to be writers perhaps they want to be novelist perhaps they want to every critic may have a great book on a great play they have aspirations and other directions that they're not just critics that it's it's part of something or perhaps I mean I think theater criticism at its best when you go back to the Victorian times likely hunt or even as Thailand you know it's it's it's a great art it's a you know it's it's it's a wonderful wonderful art for Eric Bentley here a Bentley that's right you know in eget you know I mean in England I think that that is that's great I mean and I think that he began to understand once he got inside the skin because he simply gets he really does get into the skin of his characters so what came across was a man who kind of actually the truth is he abuses his position as a critic which is the cardinal sin to do and of course he falls into hell as a result but it's a most extraordinary play because it's just also like great plays it's all about life now you've done a number of movies I think you were if I'm not mistaken the original Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter there's British actors of your stature and age seem to be carving out a place in Hollywood as villains in all these movies my wife is that well I I think it's a well I think there's a lot of reasons for and the more I live in America the more I begin to understand the American culture and how Americans tick and they're still very confusing to me but I mean America is a young country for a start and I think all this Clinton business is very interesting if you look at the Clinton thing it's a to me it's like pubescence you know America's pubescence where they're discovering all the sexual parts and because they're all a little bit embarrassed and I'm soon we'll be all sophisticated as well you're Europeans but naturally you've got to go through this stage this kind of public shaming if you like but I think it's a very healthy thing in the same way I think that that anything European is always regarded as somewhat villainous that Americans do see themselves as virtuous there's a kind of sense of virtuousness so the good guy with the white hat is you know it's John Wayne or Bruce Willis you know and the bad guy is Alan Rickman or mainly decadent the slightly decadent slightly over educated you know too clever you know too fond of the nine dollar words and I I think that that's really why Europeans present that kind of threat because that is a threat it's a threat of an old order if you like it's a threat which is understandable because the new country is trying to get away from that it's trying to get you know Eugene O'Neill I think the greatest American playwright by far he wrote a wonderful play called Strange Interlude and Strange Interlude is a sort of parable away because it's really about it's a sort of history of America because it's about America finally detaching itself from Europe the whole and and and there's a character in that which is very much like the Henry James character which was the American the late Victorian American who was in love with Europe and trying to maintain that connection well that kind of umbilical cord and and it was being cut away and it was moving away from the dock and the new America as is is funny enough as the admin the guy in the middle of that play who Nina Leeds marries as his guys in advertising and the guy who helps to promote all this is the psychiatrist the Freudian of course and it's partly yes exactly this is and this was written in 1926 and that is what is so extraordinary because it's kind of prophetic you know the whole way Americans are obsessed with therapy you know to do a kind of you know a laughable degree you know and I we I suppose we in Europe find that really very funny although to be fair in art written by European that one of the guys is in therapy all the time but this isn't talking about isn't it but this is interesting because this is the American disease this is why the world is exactly we've we've caught the whole thing about the kind of big you know because everybody's into therapy now in Europe because it's when it came from all those American in all those dynasties and all those television soap operas I want to talk a little bit about acting itself and and your approach to it and how you do it could you take us through your work process when you're attacking a role for the first time well I was very lucky I had a great teacher I mean I had several great teachers two great teachers I went to a very good school and interestingly I've always had a link with this with the states and the whole that's with Stanislavski you know as it came here and mmm I worked with a man called Vivian Matalon who was a teacher of mine and in the in the sixties director he was a director he was a Marvis director and also a brilliant teacher and he taught me about objectives and actions and those kind of basics which Stanislavski picked up from a group of actors that he you interviewed which is where his method or his so-called system actually which he preferred rather method he hated the english word method really came about and and that actually came through vivian through sandy Meisner he was with the Neighborhood Playhouse and that amazing group of people in America the group the American disease of therapy now we'll go back yeah but it doesn't it doesn't because there's a of course I think it's a very strongly I mean the whole Freudian thing is I mean these were Viennese before it was a Viennese Jew you know so that kind of self-examination is it's almost biblical you know in a way so and and it's caught on here for the understandable reasons but from an actor's point of view he has to embrace or I certainly do the the basics of what you're doing you know why you're doing it where you're going why am I on the stage you know defining what this character is finding where you're going and then that opens up to other things which is the sort of the spiritual aspect of what you do the kind of I mean I had the point in what you do not just in terms of the play but what an actor's job is and it's something that's never really really looked at people don't really talk about it because they they hate to get into kind of mystical stuff and there's something very mysterious about acting I mean I I was very privileged than what I did Lear I did tour of we did a world tour and we played in you know we played in we played in Romania we played in Cairo we played in France we played in East Germany after the fall of them that the war Dresden and Leipzig and finally we came back to England and we played in a hospital for the criminally insane Lia and I was reminded you know we played to an audience of people we you know when we went in that the doors were locked and these were people who were at the end of their sentence as it were they were at the point of rehabilitation but they had people who had been severely disturbed and all of them had in one way or another perhaps murdered someone you know and usually it was a slashing or cutting the knife seemed to be kind of prevalent and every case and at the I mean whenever I when we were doing leo's our audience of 100 people whenever a sword was produced heads would immediately in the audience drop down they would look down and after the show one of the the clinician came up with three young what two young woman and a young man and she said to me she said I want to introduce you to these these kids and there were there were young people there were people in them they were they were not even thirty in their twenties and this young woman said you know we were saying we were discussing the play and we were just saying it we were just we just felt that that moment of reconciliation between Lear and and Cordelia we you know if we'd only had that if we we all felt that we could only have had that moment between before we'd murdered our parents just you know that something could have been averted and it was it was quite shocking to hear that and during the play when Lear says the lion is there any cause in nature for these hard hearts a young woman who had been aphasic was sitting on the front row on her own she went no no cause and it was about the most extraordinary performance thank you it was quite remarkable and you suddenly and I subsequently went back and later on I did the master builder and I went back to Broadmoor and a whole series of different issues the issues of pedophilia all kinds of issues came out of that play and I began to understand a little bit clearer what the process is for an audience what happens when an audience sits in the theatre what goes through them of an evening the fact that they are lifted out of them you know their torpor or they're reminded of something there's all kind of healing aspects about what you do and that just fascinates me which goes back to answering your question is the context of why you do something also makes you the way you do it to you know the responsibility with which you do it and responsibility to to come to the truth of something for a display you know just a technical standpoint do you get a script and take it with a pen and go through it and underline devise it you never do that the script is like an organic piece of material I never I never under I mean some actors do yeah I mean I have on occasion underlined but I I never do that because I'm I'm really into the whole play I'm into the whole rhythm of the play and it and it's an active thing it's something that you do in a room with you know the script has is there because you've got a I mean now I what I do now what I did in San Nicolas I get someone to teach me the script so that more and more in rehearsal I'm freed from the script and this is something that's come to be partly to do with as I get older the brain cells [Laughter] the great thing is that you know when someone teaches you the script I have an assistant back and you know and I did it with some necklace I did with art because we had less than three weeks to prepare art so I got someone to teach me the scripts and how they teach it to you they well they just read it to me and I listened to her and then I work out what I'm you know what what it means but it's usually I get someone you know the guy who works with me is a guy he was he's not really an actor so he reads it just as a layman as it was so that it has a kind of it's non attitude and eyes do you know so that you then lay the attitude in and you think what does that mean and and you say say that again say that again so that I'm learning it that way in a way like it is a bit like rope but like a parrot but also you're kind of your discerning as you're learning at the same time and it's a to me is it's it's the best way I've found of doing it and it's actually I've only started to do that recently I mean I was notorious for never knowing the play at the first preview I mean I always got through it but the rest of the actors used to be sort of they never knew if I was actually gonna get all the I always knew I would get all the words so I decided it was time to be a bit more responsible more professional but if you just tell us how you got into into the theatre how you became an actor well I I started when I was I I started when I was fifteen you're from Dundee in Scotland I came from the east coast east coast of Scotland and my family none a bit nobody had been in the theatre but when I was a kid my parents were quite known in their 40s when I was born so and my father died when I was 9 and my mother was institutionalized for a short time and so I spent a lot of time at the cinema which was my babysitter my child minder you know so I used to go off to this and in those days children could do that they could just go off be sent off and there were always a cinema in the mighty hometown or something like at one time thirty cinemas nothing wrong about - and I used to go there and I just knew this is what I wanted to do and I was the youngest child and I was always made to perform at new year you know which is a great celebration of Scotland and then I went and I started at Dundee rep and I started just to that period in the early 60s which was just after the you know the Royal Court look back and anger I wonder the first actors I mean the first actor I've ever met was Nicol Williamson and ironically when I walked into the theatre there was a fight going on it was it was absolutely my first introduction to the theater it was Nicol Williamson and the stage manager having a fistfight on the snail and everybody was calling each other darling and I thought this is a very strange place I'm there and there was Glenda Jackson she was the company and and I was the kid I mean I made the tea that's what I that's literally how I started and then I met I met Christine Linklater who came along she came to do some classes a brilliant voice teacher and I thought right I'm gonna go to the school she's out and because I promptly went to lambda which is where I studied and she was there but the day literally the day I started she'd came to the states but that was that was my beginning and then I and then I worked a lot at the Royal Court I worked with people at Lindsay Anderson it was a great influence on me Brian Cox you've been a terrific guest you can be seen Brian Cox can be seen in art playing a man who hates Modern Art hates modernity doesn't appreciate the values of water you've been a delight thank you for being our guest tonight thank you so much thank you very much and now through the magic we can look at Brian Cox in last year's label online is the official website of theater talk and the home of the playbill Club providing exciting opportunities for theater lovers we welcome your questions or comments for theater talk thank you and good night [Music]

Channel: Theater Talk Archive

Views: 498

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Brian Cox, Theater Talk, Susan Haskins-Doloff, Art, Succession, Yasmina Reza, Conor McPherson, St. Nicholas, Primary Stages, Susan Haskins, Off Broadway, Broadway

Id: jB_dEYE7hkM

Length: 26min 47sec (1607 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021