Book review: In Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, Brian Cox channels the acerbic voice that got him popular on Succession

It is not often that an actor who has been around the industry for almost half a century makes his biggest, most illustrious mark in his late 70s. Brian Cox has been around for so long that when you read his autobiography, more than the moderate heights, it is really his many lives that scream at you, typically perhaps, to establish a sense of awe.

As Logan Roy, the foul-mouthed patriarch of the Roy family in the global hit HBO show _Succession_, Cox has become the kind of late bloomer who you suddenly realise has been quietly exceptional all along. Even Cox’s autobiography, much like the actor’s career, is that rare piece of celebrity literature – more meat than the hype.

In Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, Cox channels his typical acerbic wit as he talks life, work, politics, religion, and cancel culture. The only downside of this eminently funny confessional is that it has surprisingly little to say about the show that has made him a late late sensation.  

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Cox begins his story from a couple of generations before himself, describing his own birth with “There was no abseiling down Fallopio and into the light for me.” The actor’s early life of penury and religiosity – which he refers to as ‘conditioned ignorance’ – powered both his motivations and conflicts. To make ends meet, Cox writes he had to ‘beg barter bits’ as a life of intense suffering turned to the pillowing comforts of the make-believe world of cinema. It is where Cox understood ‘the power of performance,’ and knew he belonged.

But the road to stardom, which you could argue the actor had not achieved until a few years ago, was always going to be rocky. There were professional and personal struggles, opportunities missed, and some very bad decisions along the way. “I’ve been a terrible father,” the actor admits rather plainly.

Cox admits to having made poor choices, and rather refreshingly does not restrain the smell of regret from escaping the pages.

As is his nature, Cox writes with as acidic a pen as the tongue he often lashes out with on Succession.    Even moments that demand a hint of pathos, the actor approaches with a satirical streak. He describes the miscarriage of his twins with his first wife more like a hysterical nightmare than a tragedy. It takes guts to be this visible and trivial at the same time. While the personal bits of his life, especially his time spent in theatre, make for the bulk of the book, the tastiest bits come unanticipated when the actor talks about his co-stars.

Cox admits that Morgan Freeman is a gentleman, Daniel Day-Lewis rightfully adored, and Michael Caine a near freak for being the same in every role, and yet a legend in his own right. Johnny Depp, Cox writes, “is so overblown, so overrated.” The overtly charming Edward Norton, he writes, is a “pain in the arse.” His most graceful yet controversial takedown however is reserved for Sir Ian McKellen, an actor whose work he says “offers no expiation."

Cox comes across as an actor who though mercurially talented, has always viewed acting as a means to an ends. Money, he writes, has always been a factor in picking roles – he turned down Game of Thrones because he thought it would not make any money — unlike most artists who exhibit a certain bourgeois quality for the sake of unregistered sophistication. Come to think of it, the actor has played iconic characters like Hannibal Lecter and Winston Churchill before being usurped by other portrayals [both Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman won Oscars for their roles]. No wonder then that Cox also sounds bitter and a tad presumptuous when comparing roles – something he could have handsomely avoided. But it is also something that makes him this fascinating, raw human being who does not care for the bridges he might end up burning. “Everyone in this book is either dead or cancelled,” he writes at one point.

That said, there is surprisingly little in the book about the show that has belatedly made Cox into this globally recognised star. There are a few passages but they are more analytical than you would wish they were anecdotal. It is perhaps a toast to the cult of the show that even the actors’ personal lives, you wish, were as manically open-lipped.

Nonetheless, Cox writes well and unpretentiously about a career that, in retrospect, looks more stunning than it is usually given credit for. About his solitary foray into India, Cox writes with the alarmism of a midnight coup, “Living the life I had, I knew poverty, but nothing like on this scale.” It is the kind of tone that might get called out for an imperialist lens, least of all from an actor who declares his support for Scotland’s independence movement.

You woud wish Cox would address such ironies but he is not the consummate auteur, the sage most artists want to emulate. He is happy being the court jester for it lets him be who he really is, at last.

Manik Sharma writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between.

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