Actor Brian Cox has enough experience and glorious credentials to kick ass if he wants. This is what he has just done by publishing his memoirs, entitled “Putting the Rabbit in the Hat”, and in which he skins the star Johnny Depp.
Brian Cox: a (big) mouth of cinema
Since 1971 and a very first appearance in Nicholas and Alexandra, British actor Brian Cox has amassed a significant number of notable supporting roles and a few leading roles in film. He is Dr. Hannibal Lecter in 1987 for Michael Mann in The Sixth Sense (Manhunter in VO), but it’s mostly from 1995 and his role in Braveheart that it connects the services noticed.
For example, he is one of the key characters in The memory in the skin (2002) and The death in the skin (2004), and is seen regularly in several major productions from those years. Currently at the peak of her game and popularity thanks to her role in the series Succession, he has just published his memoirs. A book full of anecdotes and comments on the film industry, and in which he expresses himself in particular with acidity on Johnny Depp.
Johnny Depp, “so overrated”
We can consider that this comment has something like “shooting the ambulance”, since Johnny Depp, after decades of stardom, is in the deepest trough of his career. But Brian Cox’s lines don’t target the actor on his personality, rather on, according to him, an overestimate of their professional abilities. It is thus in the detour of a comment on Pirates of the Caribbean, whose cast he almost joined in the role of the governor – finally played by Jonathan Pryce -, that Brian Cox sends a well-felt tackle to Johnny Depp.
This role would have been a financial jackpot, but of all the roles in this film it was the most unrewarding, and I should have then taken it for several films, and not done all the beautiful roles that I had elsewhere . Another thing with “Pirates of the Caribbean” is that it’s mostly the “Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow” spectacle. And Depp, as amiable as I imagine him to be, is so, so overrated. Think of “Edward Scissorhands”. Let’s face it, if you show up with hands like that and that pale, scarred makeup, you don’t have to do anything more. And he did nothing more. He even did less. But people love him. Or they loved him. They like him less today, that’s for sure. If Johnny Depp wanted the role of Jack Sparrow now, production would give it to Brendan Gleeson instead.
Edward Scissorhands, An illusion ?
We’re not so sure what Brendan Gleeson is doing in this, if not to violently affirm his criticism. Indeed, Edward Scissorhands was a pivotal role in Johnny Depp’s career, so much so that audiences may have forgotten how much of the credit perhaps went to director Tim Burton, as well as other roles and other aspects of the film…
