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By Hugh Hart
In “L.I.E.” Brian
Cox plays a pedophile. The 55-year old Scottish actor has also portrayed a
cannibal (Hannibal Lector in the 1985 film “Manhunter”) and a Nazi
(Herman Goering in TNT’s 2000 cable miniseries “Nurenburg”).
But a child molester? Even the most open minded actor must surely take pause
before considering such a role.
“I find the film
difficult to watch,” admits Cox, the father of two grown children.
“It’s a tough film. It becomes very unsettling, but ultimately
it’s a very rewarding film.”
Rewarding, says Cox, because “L.I.E.” treats its
subject matter in a non-exploitative manner. “If a film is responsible,
like when I saw Todd Solondz’ ‘Happiness,’ you go, ‘This is true, this is
not sensational.’ ‘L.I.E.’ is not judging, in the wrong way,
but at the same time it doesn’t let the guy off the hook. It’s not
a fetish film or sensation for sensation’s sake. ‘L.I.E.’
takes you on a journey that [asks the audience] how do you feel, how do you
feel about these things? It’s ambiguous. People get caught up in it. They
genuinely think, this is horrendous.”
“L.I.E’s”
could have been even more disturbing: Cox’s Big John Harrigan character
likes teenage boys, not younger children. For Cox, that’s an important
distinction. “It’s not about sex with children, which I would have
a real problem with,” he says. “If you look at films like
‘Lolita,’ which is about guys getting off on teenage girls -
that’s not particularly acceptable either, but, ‘L.I.E.’ is a
similar thing to that.”
Set in a suburb intersected
by the Long Island Expressway -- nicknamed L.I.E. -- the story revolves around
an aimless 15-year old, Howie (Paul Franklin Dano) whom Vietnam vet Big John
tries to seduce. Over the course of a long hot summer, John eventually becomes
a kind of surrogate father to the restless teenager. Directed and co-written by
Michael Cuesta, the NC-17-rated film opens Sept. 28 in Los Angeles.
Acquaintances tried to warn
him off the project, Cox recalls. “People said, ‘You’re not
going to do yourself any favors by taking a part like this.’ Look,
I’m an actor, for 40 years. I think I’m reasonably good at what I
do. I think the range of my work speaks for itself.”
Indeed, since filming
“L.I.E.” last summer, Cox has moved on from suburban pederast to
Supreme Court Justice. He’ll play a judge in ABC’s mid-season drama
The Court, starring Sally Fields. Cox also appears over the next few weeks in
the films “Super Trooper,” “Affair of the Necklace” and
“The Bourne Identity.”
The burly actor recently
brunched on eggs Benedict at a West Hollywood restaurant, where he talked about
getting inside the head of such an extreme character. What was his preparation?
“I do very little.” Cox says. “I just play the role.
“I don’t buy all
this identification with roles,” he continues. “All these actors
who submerge themselves in roles, basically, they’re covering up for a
lack of talent, a lack of real craft.”
---
Cox’s astonishing
facility for slipping in and out of roles -- he’s made more than 60 films
so far -- can be credited to his training in England’s repertory theater
system. When Cox came of age professionally, there was simply no time to
inhabit a character ‘round the clock. “In those days, they used to
do fortnightly rep,” says Cox, “They’d changed the play every
two weeks. I’d get to watch actors like Glenda Jackson and Nicol
Williamson do their work, change their hats, and in a year, they might do as
many as 20 roles. They didn’t play it with any less commitment, but
considerably more in many ways because with all that variety you have to keep
the brainpower going, the learning capacity. In a way, what you had to do
growing up in the theater was, you had to prove your worth all the time.”
For Cox, that meant exploring
the Shakespeare canon opposite actors like Albert Finney and Ian McKellen,
winning two Olivier Awards [ED: fyi, British equivalent of Tony Awards;
I’m not sure it’s necessary to explain that] along the way. Says
Cox, “I had to struggle throughout to prove your classical muscle, and
that’s what you have to do: You have to take on the classical theater,
beat it, and then walk away.”
---
Even before his formal
training began, a chaotic childhood had primed Cox psychologically for life as
an actor. His father died when he was nine. His mother suffered a nervous
breakdown and was institutionalized. Young Cox was sent to live with his aunt.
He taught himself to read by poring over the labels of his sister’s
record collection.
“It’s not
something I recommend,” muses Cox, “But as a kid, if your world is
taken away from you, there ain’t nothin’ you can do about it,
because you have no power. It’s a very good way of training yourself as an
actor. You have an entry into the world as an unsteady place. What it does is
give you insight, when you’re very young, about how the world truly is,
and it forces you to develop the survival mechanism.”
---
Cox’s breakthrough
American film role came in 1985 the pre-Anthony Hopkins incarnation of Hannibal
Lector in Michael Mann’s “Manhunter.” Dozens of villainous
roles followed. At one point, he grew weary of playing the bad guy. Cox says a
performance as King Lear at a British hospital for the criminally insane
reminded him why actors need to embody even the most heinous aspects of human
nature. “Many in the audience had killed their parents,” he says.
“We’re performing the play for these people, and Lear’s in
the hovel, out from the storm, soaking, got no clothes on, his daughters have
rejected him, and he’s got this line, ‘Is there any cause in nature
for these hard hearts?’ And this young woman in the front row, who
hadn’t spoken in years, went ‘No, no, no, no cause, no
cause.’
“At a moment like that,
you go, ‘God, this is such an amazing job.’ You had the feeling
that you were part of some kind of ritual, where it’s almost like you
take on people’s sins on their behalf; there’s a sort of exorcising
that goes on. You suddenly realize what you’re dealing with, how precious
the material is, how precious the whole subject of humanity is.”
----
Director Cuesta spoke to a
few other actors before recruiting Cox for “L.I.E.” “The
problem some people had was not playing a dirty old man but the fact that
you’re stretching a taboo,” he notes. “They’d say, ‘Come on, this guy,
he’s not sympathetic. The audience is never gonna buy that.’ I
guess that’s where the controversy lies, the fact that this character has
a moment of humanity and decency.”
Cuesta counted on Cox to make
Big John more than a mere monster. “The menacing part, I knew Brian could
do,” says Cuesta. “We never even spoke about that, because
he’s played Hannibal Lector for Christ’s sake. Brian knows how to
put you on the edge of your seat. When I met him, I wasn’t searching for
that, I was searching for the humanity. Brian brings this sort of affable,
chummy, jovial quality to the role and that’s what I think bothers
people, is that they like him. He’s creepy when he has to be creepy, but
when he’s cooking breakfast, you can’t help but love the
guy.”
It all comes down to point of
view, says Cox. “When you come to playing characters like Goering, or Big
John, you think, well, these are people who started off with all kinds of
aspirations and it all went wrong and they ended on the wrong side. So that is
a fascinating challenge to play: the human being who’s gone off the
mark.” To make such a character palpable, Cox says, “It’s not
just saying the lines; it’s where the guy’s coming from, it’s
the guy’s point of view. Even the most heinous character has a point of
view.”
In the case of
“L.I.E.,” Cox, found the virtue in his villain by investing Big
John with nurturing instincts. “He wants to be a father but his sex thing
gets in the way, because he’s ruled by his libido. But his real desire is
to be a padrone, a father. It’s an interesting dilemma,” says Cox.
“Here’s a man who’s a sexual predator of young men, when
actually his desire is to be an enabler, to make someone blossom, to make
someone grow.”
As a point of reference, Cox,
who’s taught drama at Harvard University and the London Academy of Music
and Dramatic Arts, says “You get young girls who have crushes on you; it
would be so easy to take advantage of them. But you go ‘No, this is a
relationship which is about her ability and therefore I can’t cross the
line.’ Now John had never been able to do that. And suddenly he’s
put in a position where, for once, he doesn’t cross the line.
That’s the redemptive nature of the thing. And this is what I look for
all the time.”
Unless the character is a
hero. Then Cox, ever the contrarian, looks for the dark streak.
“You get actors who
say, ‘I want to play heroes. I want to be identified with heroes,’
and yeah, I don’t mind playing heroes.” Cox pauses. “If I
played heroes I’d want to see where they were rotten, you know. Because most heroes have a kind of
canker in them. That’s why they’re heroic.”