Man Eater

By: Pamela Harland
Date: Thursday, October 04, 2001

Few actors are well acclaimed yet hardly known to the public. Brian Cox is the epitome of that actor. Cox has received endless award nominations, including for the 2000 TNT Original Film NUREMBERG, as well as for his work in various stage productions such as TITUS ANDRONICUS, RAT IN THE SKULL and ST. NICOLAS. And yet, you still ask, who is Brian Cox? Ironically, his most famous role to date gained notoriety when played by someone else. Hannibal Lecter, believe it or not, was originated on screen by Cox five years before Anthony Hopkins went on to win the Best Actor Oscar for the role while the film THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS took home Best Picture of '91. Cox played Hannibal the Cannibal in Michael Mann's version in '86 entitled MANHUNTER.

Out to promote his most recent film L.I.E., about a man whose interest in young teenage boys is questionable, Cox, reluctantly at first, discusses his thoughts on producer Dino De Laurentiis' remaking MANHUNTER (titled RED DRAGON for the book and now for the new film), his views on Hollywood's blockbuster talent and what drives him to play such creepy characters over and over again.

In person Cox is not an intimidating man in stature. He is short. He is stocky. He is gray. And he is English. Not your typical villain or "bad" guy. But those are the parts, the very roles he has been called upon to play during his 30 plus years of acting. Why? Cox can't even tell you himself.

"It's a very odd thing.

I always think, 'Why does a healthy heterosexual person like myself get absorbed into these roles,'" laughs Cox. "I find it really quite weird. I've played all these sort of strange people and I keep thinking how odd that I've had this kind of career."

In L.I.E., Cox plays Big John Harrigan, a wealthy man who hangs out with troubled teenaged boys who have lost their way. He brings them in, comforts them and then seduces them. A nice guy, Cox would have you believe.

"I think, basically, he is a very good man. He is a hero. Because he reclaims this boy," says Cox in regards to one deeply disturbed boy whom Big John does not seduce but only helps get back on track. "He saves Howie (Paul Franklin Dano). He saves Howie from himself. And in terms of getting him on the road to something."

After a moment, the 55-year-old Cox, perhaps realizing the harshness of what he just said, elaborates. "I don't mean he is a hero in the sense that he's a 'hero,'" explains Cox. "I think he is flawed. I think he is incredibly flawed; clearly he is flawed. Anybody who goes around pursuing 15-year-old to 18-year-old boys in a kind of obsessive way that he does is flawed. There is something wrong with him. I think that is a given."

The film, tame in many ways comparably speaking, was given an NC-17 rating by the MPAA to Cox's disbelief. He is not without his opinion as to why the Academy deemed this material so harsh, even though there are no sex scenes with minors and only one heterosexual sex scene amongst adults with only partial nudity.

"It has

no merit whatsoever," says Cox referring to the rating. "It's stupid. It's silly. It's biased. It's prejudiced. It's fearful. It's unintelligent. But it also seriously validates the film in certain ways because it shows that something that is implicit is much more disturbing than something that is explicit."

Explicit or not, Cox approaches each and every role in the same manner... with great consideration. Whether or not he accepts a role, despite the typical reasons - director, script, cast and so on has to do with the honesty of the person he will portray and if he thinks he can get that across to audiences.

"I look at the truth. I look at what their dilemma is," reveals Cox. "I look at what point of view he has - good or bad or indifferent. They all have their point of view. You might not agree with their point of view but there is a point of view. And my thing is to understand their basic humanity."

Finding the humanity in Hannibal Lecter may be harder to find than most. But Cox, in an under-appreciated role, found it 15 years back in MANHUNTER. A polite man by nature, Cox is uncomfortable discussing the film, especially when in comes to the now-in-the-works remake. And yet, once the floodgates are opened, Cox is almost liberated by the topic.

"I think very little about the remake of MANHUNTER really," says Cox, who pauses and then continues. "It's a franchise, what do you expect? They are going to squeeze every ounce that they can out of it. And good luck to them. That's the other side of the movie business."

Though he concedes to having seen SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and thinking it "an extremely fine film," Cox's disappointment with how MANHUNTER was handled is evident even to this day.

"[Producer] Dino De Laurentiis was

bankrupt so the film landed in escrow for a very long time," explains Cox. "We didn't have the money so they couldn't sell MANHUNTER. Later on down the line they recovered some."

Some or most of Cox's bitterness lies with De Laurentiis himself. Cox says he badmouths the film whenever he gets a chance now and if De Laurentiis could, he would have "every copy of MANHUNTER destroyed."

Confessing his boredom on the Hannibal topic, we shift gears to his Big John character and his ability to play a pedophile as an Every Day Man. Cox believes there is some form of a Big John in every neighborhood, not to say they are all pedophiles.

"Everybody has a Big John in their life," says Cox. "When we were children I had a Big John in my life. I think the character is so well drawn that there's so much room for the kind of layers for this man. John's public and private life and the incapable nature of them doesn't mean one is a front for the other. It means that his truth is that he wants his private life to be his public life. That his public life is his reality. His availability. His humanity. His private life is the dark side of his life."

Cox portrays each of his characters as real people, imperfections of this world - their biggest problems being their denial and their ignorance to their wrong doings.

"I can walk through this whole movie with an arrow in my head and blood running down my cheek and I would have ignored it," says Cox. "You would say, 'Well, what about that arrow and the blood,' and I would have said, 'What arrow with blood?' You just play the role and the role presents itself."

The roles presented

to Cox are nowhere near the ones of a Hollywood movie star. And yet, he consistently works in the business without settling for lesser parts or performances. But Cox questions the "stars" of Hollywood and their acting abilities, believing that acting is a dying art.

"My roles are acting roles," says Cox proudly. "The problem with the actors that have reached a certain place is that they can't act anymore. You can only save the world so many times. After that it becomes a kinda chore. 'How do I save the world yet again?'"

Cox does reserve some sympathy for these actors.

"I feel for these actors because I feel this is not what they wanted to do," says Cox. "This is how they ended up. It's making for difficult lives for them. But they should have seen it coming when they were a lot younger."

Sometimes, believes Cox, just who becomes rich and famous is out of our control, coming from a much bigger and fateful place.

"You are caught in your destiny," explains Cox. "And you always have to have sympathy for people who are caught in their destiny. Destiny is a curious thing. Some people have shitty lives and some people have wonderful lives. I am an advocate for the art of acting. There are not enough people doing it. There are too many people selling what has become Harrison Ford or what has become the Brad Pitts or what have you. Somebody can say, 'Well you would love to have been Brian Cox, the movie star.' Well, I am Brian Cox and very proud of the fact that I am Brian Cox. And I actually have quite a nice existence thank you very much. I am not sure I would want the opening weekend put upon my shoulders. That's the way the world has gone. I would think, 'What does that mean?'"

Cox polishes off his last bit of water which has lasted him the entirety of the interview, pauses before getting up to leave and then thinks again before adding, "Mind you, 20 million dollars a pop," smiles Cox, "I could be persuaded."