Want Creepy? Brian Cox Is the Go-To Guy

In “L.I.E.,” Brian Cox plays a pedophile. The 55-year-old Scottish actor has also portrayed a cannibal (Hannibal Lecter in the 1986 film “Manhunter”) and a Nazi (Hermann Goering in TNT’s 2000 cable miniseries “Nuremberg”). But a child molester? Even the most open-minded actor would surely pause before considering such a role.

“I find the film difficult to watch,” admits Cox, the father of two grown children. “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’s ‘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” 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 (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 movie from Lot 47 Films opened Friday in Los Angeles.

Acquaintances tried to warn Cox off the project, the actor 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 midseason drama “The Court,” starring Sally Field. Cox also appears in the upcoming comedy “Super Trooper,” the romantic period adventure “Affair of the Necklace” and the spy thriller “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 don’t buy all this identification with roles. All these actors who submerge themselves in roles, basically, they’re covering up for a lack of talent, a lack of real craft.”

Cox notes that his own chaotic childhood primed him psychologically for life as an actor. His father died when he was 9. 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 record labels on his sister’s collection of 78s.

“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 needed.”

Cox’s astonishing facility for slipping in and out of roles--he’s made more than 60 films so far, along with countless stage roles--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 change 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 (the British equivalent of the Tony Awards) along the way. Says Cox, “I had to struggle throughout to prove [my] classical muscle. You have to take on the classical theater, beat it, and then walk away.”

Cox’s breakthrough American film role came in the pre-Anthony Hopkins incarnation of Hannibal Lecter in Michael Mann’s “Manhunter.” Dozens of villainous roles followed. At one point, Cox grew weary of playing the bad guy. But then 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.”

Michael Cuesta, a first-time director, 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. “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 adds, “it’s not just saying the lines; it’s where the guy’s coming from, it’s the guy’s 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 has taught drama at Harvard University and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, 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.”

That is, 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.”’ 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.” *