Latest news with #BrianCox
Scottish Sun
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Scottish Sun
Hollywood icon brands Scots city ‘a f*****g disgrace' in scathing blast
He revealed what 'severed' his connection to the city FALLEN BY THE TAYSIDE Hollywood icon brands Scots city 'a f*****g disgrace' in scathing blast Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Brian Cox said the Scottish city he grew up in has turned from a lively place to an "absolute f*****g disgrace". The Succession star said Dundee was poor when growing up, but still had "character". Sign up for the Entertainment newsletter Sign up 4 Brian Cox slammed his hometown Credit: Alamy 4 He said his connection to the city had been "severed" Credit: Alamy 4 Cox said he was "bereft" when Dundee citizens were moved out of the city centre Credit: PA The 79 year old said that housing schemes which were introduced into the city in the 1950s is the root of the problem which exists today. Cox also admitted his connection to the city has been "severed" following the loss of his older sister Betty, who died at the age of 92 in 2023. The actor told the Big Issue magazine: "I'm 79 and I'm old enough to remember walking down the high street when [lightweight boxer] Dick McTaggart won gold at the 1956 Olympics in Australia. "I have this memory of him riding through the streets on top of the tram with his cup. "The town was lively then. "It was poor, but it had character. "Now the high street of Dundee is an absolute f*****g disgrace, just as it was in the '50s when they started sending people out into the schemes, which had no amenities and nothing to encourage community. "I lost half my class in 1956 when they all went off to the schemes." In the 1950s, Dundee built new council housing for working-class families, many of which were built on the outskirts of the city. Cox said he was "bereft" when Dundee citizens were moved out of the city centre, adding: "This lack of thinking still irritates me and it's constant. Scottish Premiership club enlist Hollywood superstar to sell their £95M new stadium and hotel plans "I met Dundee's Lord Provost recently and he told me he wanted to get people back into the city, I told him they should never have taken them out in the first place. "The damage that was done is the problem for all these new towns now. "You alienate people and effectively put them in open prisons." Cox added: "My connection to the place has been severed. "The reason I used to come back to Dundee was because of my oldest sister, Betty, and she passed away a few years ago. "So coming back has been sad, because now I want to see her and she's not here."
Reuters
3 days ago
- Business
- Reuters
James Graham on why the 2008 crash still defines our politics
Few British institutions have escaped James Graham's spotlight. The British playwright's 2017 West End hit 'Ink' examined Rupert Murdoch's Sun newspaper and the rise of tabloid journalism in Britain. Two years later came 'Brexit: The Uncivil War,' a televised drama dissecting the personalities and strategies behind Brexit's victorious Vote Leave campaign. In his acclaimed 2024 show 'Dear England,' Graham turned to soccer, telling the story of former England manager Gareth Southgate and the men's national team's impact on the country's psyche. In his forthcoming show 'Make It Happen,' starring "Succession" actor Brian Cox, Graham sets his sights on the Royal Bank of Scotland — which claimed one of the world's largest bailouts after collapsing under risky investments — and its role in the 2008 financial crash, the consequences of which he says remain acutely felt today. 'I've always been obsessed by that moment and why it happened,' he tells Reuters from Edinburgh, where the show is set to open on July 30. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Why tell the story of the 2008 crash now, and why through the Royal Bank of Scotland? I guess I feel the paralysis that a lot of people feel politically and culturally at the moment. Every 25 to 30 years, the West tends to go through these momentous moments of reset and rebirth. A new contract emerges from the collapse of one era and you arrive at a consensus in another one, whether that's World War II or the fall of the Berlin Wall. That didn't happen in 2008. It felt like we limped through the crisis and no new idea, no new proposition, emerged. Seventeen years on, we're still living in the shadow of that huge crisis — whether that was the decade of austerity in the UK or the stagnation in our politics (and) our public life that led to Brexit or (Donald) Trump in the U.S. I can't take any credit for the Scottish angle. The National Theatre of Scotland came to me to suggest the frame of the Royal Bank of Scotland, which was at the time the biggest bank in the world (and) therefore needed the biggest bailout. Brian Cox came onboard and suggested that if we're going to do it as a Scottish story, to go all the way back to the Scottish Enlightenment and Adam Smith and the birth of this idea of free markets and modern-day capitalism. What was your experience of the crash like? I just moved to London. I was in my early 20s and I was finding my feet. I was very economically insecure, doing lots of part-time work in bars and factories and warehouses, trying to make my way as a writer. So I remember feeling quite a selfish, immediate fear. We'd been promised that this was the end of history and that everything was inevitably going to be a linear advancement towards progress and improvement. I remember having a visceral reaction — what is this going to mean for the arts, for theatre? I had no idea the longer, bigger crises and anger that was going to be coming down the line. It felt like a very American story: Lehman Brothers and images of people walking out of downtown Wall Street with boxes in their hands. I never saw Edinburgh Castle or Arthur's Seat or statues of Adam Smith, and I think that (Edinburgh) really was the epicenter of this — certainly for the UK, but for the world. All roads now, to me, clearly lead to that city. You credit Cox for bringing Adam Smith into the show. How does he feature? When he first said Adam Smith should be in it, we were having dinner, and it was the first time I'd ever met him. I didn't think he meant literally; I just thought it was Adam Smith's ideas, and I was like, well yeah sure, he's the father of modern economics. Of course he's going to be in it. And he went: 'No, no — in it as a character, and I want to play him.' I like looking at systems and processes and making sense of them in quite a literal, often humdrum way. So having this sort of magical quality in what I thought was going to be a play about corporate banking in Scotland immediately shocked me but rocked me in a great way. It expanded it into something slightly more operatic and gothic and mythic, and I think Edinburgh demands that in a way. It's a city full of ghosts; it's haunted. Its neoclassical architecture demands a drama of scale and of opera and of theatre. So I ran off with that and thought well of course, I can have Adam Smith appear as a ghost that's going to torture (former RBS chief) Fred Goodwin and challenge him about whether Adam Smith's ideas about markets and government regulations and capital and wealth have been misappropriated and weaponized. It's Dickensian, it's Greek. Edinburgh as a canvas gives you that permission to do something quite overtly theatrical. I was really grateful that Brian gave me what I thought initially was a really shit idea because it liberated me from men in suits talking about CDOs and futures. How do you think Scottish audiences will receive this story? I think about that a lot because the people in Edinburgh have to necessarily be a kind of character in it. I come from a mining village in Nottinghamshire of which there was one single industry and that was the mines and the pits. And when they closed, it felt like everybody was a character in that story, whether you worked down the pit or didn't. And it got to the point in which RBS — as a lender and a creditor but also as an employer and a symbol of Scottishness and of Edinburgh — turned the capital of Scotland into the capital of capital. It meant everybody was involved in that story, possibly in an uncomfortable way. Like all of us, we asked the question: In what way were we all complicit? Clearly, this was too good to be true and no one questioned it and we were very happy to take those mortgages when they were available to us. I'm fascinated to see the response from people in that city. I hope this is an empathetic way to look at what people understandably find a quite difficult chapter in their history. After dramatizing the works of Parliament, England's Football Association (FA), and now the banks, which institution do you think is the most broken? It's certainly not the FA. What I find really inspiring about the (former England manager) Gareth Southgate story is it's almost the one singular example I can find in our national life over the past 10 years where an individual or a group has gone into a place and recognized its flaws and its weaknesses but also seen its potential and its opportunity. I know he's got his detractors because he didn't win the World Cup, but he took something that everyone was feeling really bad about and that was in a pretty constant decline and went on the most successful regeneration that's ever happened in its history, and he did that by telling a better story about ourselves. I find it fascinating that (UK Prime Minister) Keir Starmer used a lot of Gareth Southgate's language when he tried to come into power. I think he sees in Gareth Southgate's language this idea that we need to write a new story. I think Keir will be the first person to say that even though he recognizes that's the challenge, what that new story is (has) yet to be identified, and I think that's the case across our institutions. I look at every other part of our national life when it comes to government, our news, or our culture and certainly our finances — none of it feels like it's able to reset and regenerate. What role do you think theatre plays in shaping public conversation today, particularly amid so much division? The thing that frightens me the most, which feels so insurmountable, is the fundamental threats to reality itself. Every other challenge, whether it's foreign policy or domestic policy — I think, well, we can probably tackle all that. But the thing I don't know how anyone even begins to fix is the shift in a commonly accepted reality amongst all of us. The real superpower of theatre, of course, is (that) it demands physical proximity in a space and you just have to be one community and you have to turn your phone off for two-and-a-half hours and share a reality. Theatre demands we see the same thing together and I think that's so socially important, probably more important than it's almost ever been. 'Make It Happen' is billed as a fictionalized satire. What does humor allow you to do that drama doesn't? It's historically a very effective weapon in liberating the tension from something and giving you permission to breathe as an audience. All these moments, especially this one, have a real human cost to it — whether it's your pension that you lost or your job or your small business or your reputation. But there are always natural absurdities in these stories as well, especially when they're of that scale. The hubris of it, the size in which that bank grew itself seems so obviously reckless now. There is a natural absurdity to the human foibles and the human condition that I think it's almost kinder to laugh at and roll your eyes at ... We do need to be able to laugh at ourselves, even if it's through grimaces and winces.
The Courier
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Courier
Brian Cox: 'I was transfixed by actress's stockings and called 'darling' on my Dundee Rep debut'
Brian Cox has recalled being 'transfixed' as he watched an actress's stockings slide down her leg during his first-ever stage appearance at the old Dundee Rep Theatre. As the Emmy-winning Dundee born and bred star of Succession returns to his theatrical roots in Make It Happen, he's spoken with warmth and candour about his formative years as a teenager at the theatre, dating back to the early 1960s. 'The first thing I ever did was a play called The Dover Road,' Brian recalled in an interview with The Courier. 'I was just a wee boy – maybe 15 or 16 – and I was playing a servant. 'I was standing behind a girl, a bona fide actress, and I remember her stockings hadn't been done up properly. 'Slowly, they just came down her leg. I was transfixed!' he laughed. Cox, now 79, is back on the modern day South Tay Street stage more than 60 years after first setting foot in the Rep's original venue on Nicoll Street. That theatre – which tragically burned down on Cox's 17th birthday, June 1 1963 – holds a sacred place in his heart. 'The Rep was my salvation,' he said. 'I left school at 15. My school was a disaster – St Michael's Junior Secondary – designed to send me into the building trade. 'I was meant to be a brickie. But I wanted something different. I wanted to be in the theatre.' It was in the old Nicoll Street building that Cox found not only his craft but his sense of belonging. 'I remember coming into the front of the theatre and this wifie in the box office said, 'You cannae get to the front fae the front, son – you've got tae go tae the back,'' he chuckled. 'So I did. And as I came in the back, I walked into a row between two actors. 'One of them was Nicol Williamson – a big name back then – and they were knocking hell out of each other. I just wanted to get past them and upstairs.' Another unexpected moment was waiting at the top of the stairs. 'There was this guy, just smoking away, and he looked at me and said, 'Are you alright, darling?' 'I thought, bloody hell, this is the place for me. Chaos downstairs, affection upstairs. That contrast – it stayed with me.' During his two years at the Rep, Cox immersed himself in all aspects of theatre life. 'I lived there,' he said. 'I used to sleep under the stage. Never went home to my mum in Tullideph Road. 'I hated where we'd moved to on Brown Constable Street, so I stayed in the theatre.' Those early performances weren't without hiccups. 'One time I had to serve food on stage,' he recalled. 'I got white sauce on my sleeve and leaned across the lead actor – splashed it all over him. 'Another time I dropped a bit of fish on the floor and thought, 'Nobody's looking' – there's a full audience in – and I slapped it back on the plate!' he laughed. The old Dundee Rep may have burned down in 1963, but the fire it lit in Cox never dimmed. After stints performing in temporary venues, he left Dundee to attend drama school in London. It was the beginning of an illustrious journey that would eventually see him become a star of stage and screen, win a Golden Globe and command stages from Broadway to the West End. Cox has returned to Dundee Rep several times since, notably in 1994 with The Master Builder and a special 'Evening With' event. He's now proud to be a patron of the theatre that launched his life. 'Yes, the Rep was great for me. It was my home,' he said. 'When it burned down, I was heartbroken. Theatre has given me everything.' His latest return to the Rep – starring in Make It Happen as the spirit of Scottish economist Adam Smith, a powerful new production celebrating resilience and creativity – feels like a full-circle moment for the veteran actor. 'I just fell in love with the job,' he said. 'That was my vocation. And I was so lucky to be welcomed here – to be part of something. I've never forgotten that.' Brian Cox, who recently called on Dundee's city father to 'sort the f***ing High Street out' in a Courier interview, appears in Make It Happen at Dundee Rep from July 18 to July 26. Dundee Rep artistic director Andrew Panton confirmed that Cox has been living up to his 'sweary reputation' in the rehearsal room. Brian is also set to host another special one-man Evening With Brian Cox' event at the Caird Hall this October. After Dundee Rep, Make It Happen, a co-production with the National Theatre of Scotland, runs at the Edinburgh International Festival.
Telegraph
13-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
I sleep in a separate bedroom to my boyfriend. It doesn't mean the romance has disappeared
Does Brian Cox have the perfect marital set-up? Brian Cox the actor, I mean, not Brian Cox the physicist. In a recent interview, the former discussed his sleeping arrangements with his wife. The pair have separate homes in North London, a nine-minute walk apart, and they 'visit' one another from time to time but sleep entirely separately, as they do in their other homes, in Brooklyn and upstate New York. Brian Cox the physicist may have this arrangement with his wife, too (so he can look up at the stars at night?), but we can't know that for sure because he hasn't recently discussed this intimate subject in a newspaper interview. Granted, few people in this country can afford one property in chi-chi Primrose Hill, where Cox and his wife have their homes, let alone two. But it doesn't sound a bad arrangement, does it? It struck a chord with me, because I've been dating a man for some time now and we sleep in separate bedrooms. He also has a flat in North London, as it happens, and I sleep in the spare room whenever I stay there. But it can't just be a peculiarly North London habit, this sleeping apart thing, because we also do it when he comes to see me in south-east London. Neither of us are great sleepers. He snores (a tiny bit, but let's keep that between us), and also our body clocks are different. My circadian rhythms aren't unlike those of a medieval peasant – at this time of year, I fade as it gets dark but wake early with the light. He goes to bed sometime after midnight and wakes later. It's simply easier and more conducive to both of us actually sleeping to spend the night apart. We've tried the same bedroom a handful of times, and at one stage he invested in a roll of a something called Hostage Tape (who came up with that brand name?), a thick, black, sticky tape plastered over the mouth in an effort to prevent the odd snore escaping. But still we're light sleepers, prone to waking up at the slightest movement, so different rooms it is. Especially if I have Dennis, my terrier, with me, because his determination to be larking about in the park by 6am only complicates matters. Dennis would also have made a good medieval peasant. Towards the start of our relationship, the romantic in me bridled at this. Hardly love's young dream to steal off to separate bedrooms like Victorians. Is this what I'd held out so long for, saying goodnight and closing my bedroom door to sleep alone? Except neither of us is that young, and we're both fortunate to have spare rooms, so why not? Practically it simply makes sense. More laundry, yes, but at least we don't wake in the morning wanting to murder one another. None of that passive aggressive 'You snored terribly last night.' 'You should have kicked me,' previous boyfriends have cried, and I've muttered bitterly that I did but it made little difference given that the nighttime orchestra started up again seconds later. In the interests of fairness, I'd like to point out that women snore too (or so I'm told), and my friend Annie and her husband sleep in separate bedrooms now because she can also put on quite the symphony at 3am. How common is separate bedrooms? And I don't mean common like a Nicky Haslam tea towel (for once). How typical is it? Can one chart the timeline of a relationship according to sleep patterns – from amorous 20-somethings entwined like strands of spaghetti, to Sybil and Basil Fawlty sexlessly undressing and getting into their single beds, or beds in other rooms entirely? Or different homes, in Cox's case. This idea, that 'separate' means 'sexless', was why I was saddened by the practice at first. Until recently, I believed one must go through the proper stages, sleeping happily beside one another, finding their hand in the night, before the Fawlty decline sets in down the line. But is this true, these days? When I was small and we lived in West Sussex, we often visited the nearby Weald and Downland Museum. Medieval loos are always quite a gripping subject for a child, but I also vividly remember being transfixed by the grotesque idea of an entire family (plus livestock) bedding down in the same room. Nowadays, happily, we've evolved a bit, so the chickens and the pigs can go outside, and human beings can largely have their own rooms. Progress, I think we call that. So why should couples be the only ones who have to stick together, sweating and farting in close proximity (come on, everyone does it), just as they did in the Dark Ages? Sleeping alone was deemed much more sanitary in the 19th century. In 1861, the American physician William Whitte Hall published a book called Sleep: Or, the Hygiene of the Night. In it, he offered the startling advice that each sleeper 'should have a single bed in a large, clean, light room, so as to pass all the hours of sleep in a pure, fresh air, and that those who fail in this, will in the end fail in health and strength of limb and brain, and will die while yet their days are not all told'. In the early 20th century, according to various historians, society started viewing couples sleeping separately as a sign of a waning marriage. Couples were expected to be more united. According to Marie Stopes, the author and women's rights campaigner, the twin-bed arrangement was 'an invention of the Devil, jealous of married bliss'. In 1961, an organisation called the Bedding Guild surveyed 3,608 women and concluded that 'the double bed is symbolic of marital bliss and closeness. It is also an object of pride and prestige. Most women regard it as a part of a traditional marriage'. Which is exactly the sort of thing you might expect the Bedding Guild to say, and yet so it has remained. A few months ago, I went away with a friend who slept badly every night because she said she found it hard to sleep without her husband beside her. Part of me thought, 'Get a grip'; another part of me thought, 'I'd like that.' But one of the things I've (quite slowly) learnt about relationships is that I can't necessarily have absolutely everything I want. Compromise, in other words. Some couples may sleep terrifically beside one another; others may not. But I wonder how many are reluctant to admit this publicly because it feels like an admission of some sort about their relationship. A failing. I don't mind saying that I'm in Cox's camp, and potentially stronger in limb and brain as a result. On the other hand, if anyone has any tips regarding young terriers snuffling about and causing a disturbance several times a night, I'm all ears.
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Red Eye' ending explained: Who wins Cillian Murphy and Rachel McAdams' face-off at 40,000 feet?
Red Eye, Wes Craven's 2005 thriller starring Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy, is now streaming on Netflix. EW's critic previously praised the film as a "quick-and-dirty suspense corker." Brian Cox and Jayma Mays round out the Murphy and Rachel McAdams were both recent breakout stars when horror maestro Wes Craven cast the pair in Red Eye, a trim 2005 thriller that recently arrived at Netflix. The movie begins like a rom-com, with McAdams' high-strung Lisa and Murphy's charming Jackson meeting in line at the Dallas airport before sharing a drink and being seated side-by-side for their overnight flight to Miami. Once they're in the air, however, things get weird. And then they get scary. "A good measure of the movie's white-knuckle fun comes from Craven's old-hand familiarity with the way thrillers tick, predicated on the smallest and most banal of missed connections, the kind that get an audience to go crazy," Entertainment Weekly's critic wrote in their review, calling Red Eye a "quick-and-dirty suspense corker." Murphy, however, may disagree. "I don't think it's a good movie," the Oscar-winning actor told GQ last year. "It's a good B movie." C'mon, Murph, they can't all be Oppenheimer. Ahead of the film's 20th anniversary next month — and with the streaming generation discovering it for the first time — let's unpack Red Eye's ending, from the identity of Murphy's peculiar Jackson to that explosive assassination attempt. Lisa is a self-described "people pleaser," the manager of a luxe Miami hotel where she's routinely bulldozed by high-end clientele. Jackson is a handsome stranger she meets at the airport while traveling back home from Dallas after her grandmother's funeral. At first, it seems as if fate has brought the two together, with the pair sharing a drink after meeting in line and then serendipitously ending up seated next to each other. But his charm curdles once he reveals a deep knowledge of her life. He needs her help, and if she doesn't give it to him, her oblivious father, Joe (Brian Cox), will be killed by a hit man waiting outside his home. Jackson's plan involves Charles Keefe (Jack Scalia), the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, who recently made waves with aggressive rhetoric regarding the United States' war on terror. (Remember, Red Eye was filmed in the wake of 9/11 and amid the Iraq War.) Keefe booked a stay at Lisa's hotel, and Jackson wants her to move him (and his family) to a different room so his employers can more easily assassinate him. During the overnight flight, Lisa makes several efforts to alert the flight attendants and other passengers that she's in danger — including writing in soap on the bathroom mirror that Jackson has a bomb — but he remains a step ahead of her at every turn. Finally, Lisa relents and makes the call, ordering her employee, Cynthia (Jayma Mays), to change Keefe's room assignment, as mandated by Jackson. Jackson Rippner — never "Jack," lest his name echo the 19th-century serial killer "Jack the Ripper" — denies being a spy, hit man, CIA agent, or member of the mafia. While his occupation is never explicitly stated, he calls himself a "manager" and says he specializes in "government overthrows [and] flashy, high-profile assassinations." If taken at his word, Jackson is a hired gun to help facilitate acts of terrorism. After all, he doesn't seem personally invested in Keefe's murder. "Somebody wants to send a big, brash message, that's their business," he tells Lisa. No, Keefe and his family survive the assassination attempt — a missile fired from a nearby fishing boat. Luckily for him, Lisa manages to flee Jackson, call Cynthia, and alert Keefe's security detail (which is led, oddly enough, by Survivor alum Colby Donaldson in one of his few film performances). The missile, however, meets its target, igniting the upper floors of the hotel and throwing debris. As the plane touches down in Miami, Lisa tells Jackson about a scar he noticed on her chest. She got it, she explains, from a sexual assault that occurred two years previously. "Ever since, I've been trying to convince myself of one thing over and over," she says. "That it was beyond your control," Jackson replies. "No, that it would never happen again." With that, she wields a pen stolen from another passenger and jams it into his windpipe. In the ensuing chaos, she makes a break for the exit and sprints into the airport. She's chased first by security and then by Jackson, who wraps a scarf around his wound and wheezes onward. Lisa then manages to elude her pursuers by hopping on a shuttle and stealing a car. She immediately drives to her father's home. There, she spots the hit man outside Joe's apartment and slams into him with the car, sending him flying through the front of the building and killing him. Though still alive, Joe is soon knocked unconscious by a bloodthirsty Jackson, who's determined to kill Lisa. The pair fight throughout the apartment, and Jackson is finally bested by two gunshots from the hit man's silenced pistol — one fired by Lisa and one by Joe, who wakes up to find his daughter in danger. Red Eye ends with Lisa going to her hotel, where Keefe thanks her for saving his family's life. She's then approached by a pair of rude hotel guests we first glimpsed in the film's opening scene. After complaining about the explosion, they demand that Lisa fire Cynthia. Related: The 25 best thriller movies on Netflix right now Lisa, who was previously quick to acquiesce to customers like these, tells the couple to fill out a comment card and shove it up their ass, a sign that she's no longer a pushover. Red Eye is currently available to stream on the original article on Entertainment Weekly
