Most celebrity memoirs are, let’s face it, not very good. There’s too much self-mythologizing and not enough dirt. Brian Cox is bringing the dirt. In his memoir, Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, the Succession actor is not afraid to name names.
About his The Glimmer Man co-star Steven Seagal, Cox wrote, “Steven Seagal is as ludicrous in real life as he appears on screen. He radiates a studied serenity, as though he’s on a higher plane to the rest of us, and while he’s certainly on a different plane, no doubt about that, it’s probably not a higher one.” He said he finds Quentin Tarantino’s movies to be “meretricious” and “all surface,” adding, “Plot mechanics in place of depth. Style where there should be substance. I walked out of Pulp Fiction.” That being said, if Tarantino called Cox with an offer to be in Kill Bill: Vol. 3 or whatever, “I’d do it.”
Here’s his thoughts on Johnny Depp:
“Personable though I’m sure he is, is so overblown, so overrated. I mean, Edward Scissorhands. Let’s face it, if you come on with hands like that and pale, scarred-face make-up, you don’t have to do anything. And he didn’t. And subsequently, he’s done even less.”
Cox isn’t amusingly grumpy about every actor, though: he called Keanu Reeves a “seeker” who has “actually become rather good over the years” and referred to the late Alan Rickman as “one of the sweetest, kindest, nicest, and most incredibly smart men I’ve ever met.” As someone who has seen Super Troopers approximately 47 times, I hope he has nice things to say about Farva, too.
In an interview with Esquire UK, Cox explained his decision to write the memoir (he expects to never “hear from some people again”). “Some people do memoirs far, far too young. Why are you doing your memoir now when you’re only 32? There’s no life! Getting to where I’ve got to, you’re looking more at the end than the beginning, and you have to just be as honest as you can be without causing offense,” Cox said. “If I was going to be tough with people I had to be equally tough with myself, and not be vainglorious, in order to create a balance.”
Putting the Rabbit in the Hat comes out in the U.S. in January 2022.
(Via the Big Issue and Esquire UK)