The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (90 page)

Sir Tom
(Thomas Daniel)
Courtenay
, b. Hull, Yorkshire, 1937
Tom Courtenay and Albert Finney were friends who grew up together. Onscreen, they had shared triumphs, and I hope that never hurt the friendship. Finney is a year older, born the other side of the Pennines, in Manchester, and they were both actors who faced the challenge of what to do with that flat north-country accent. They both came through. Finney has five Oscar nominations and Courtenay has two. Neither has ever won. But Courtenay has a knighthood, which leaves one suspecting either that Albert is uncertain whether he could get up from a kneeling position or has he been altogether too “naughty” too often. Sir Tom, of course, is the model of subdued self, of knowing your place and being grateful for small mercies. Whereas Finney—like it or not—has tried immense, terrifying, and monstrous things: he has been a psychotic killer; he had that immense fight with Diane Keaton in
Shoot the Moon;
he knew the Consul in
Under the Volcano;
he could be Sloper in
Washington Square
or Leo in
Miller’s Crossing
. He collected women like a diva gathering bouquets. He was too much—after all, he would play Tamburlaine and Donald Wolfit.

Tom Courtenay was born in Hull, that peculiarly separate or semi-detached part of the British Isles. He was the son of a boat painter, so he was probably grateful to be sent to RADA before taking over (from Albert) onstage in the lead in
Billy Liar
. He had a flat, squeezed face, a place where self-pity and apparent resignation lived together. In truth, those two sometimes go well together, though the brew can lead to malice or madness (think of Abbott and Costello)—just once, in
Doctor Zhivago
(65, David Lean) we may see the cruelty in promoted self-pity—and I’m not saying that isn’t a powerful glimpse of the bureaucratic spirit in every evil empire.

But Courtenay’s Billy—in
Billy Liar
the movie (63, John Schlesinger)—knew he was a loser and knew he deserved it. He was not worthy of Julie Christie—Finney would live to have Anouk Aimée and Diana Quick in his arms. Courtenay was not always a happy movie actor, and I’m sure his best work was done onstage (often in Manchester). But his film debut was
Private Potter
(62, Caspar Wrede), and after he had won the BAFTA newcomer award for
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
(62, Tony Richardson), he was typecast as the forlorn social outsider who knew he was doomed. Thus he was the executed Private Hamp in
King & Country
(64, Joseph Losey), patronized and cared for by the chilly Dirk Bogarde.

Soon after
Doctor Zhivago
, his chances fell off—he did not have the energy to be heroic:
King Rat
(65, Bryan Forbes);
The Night of the Generals
(67, Anatole Litvak);
The Day the Fish Came Out
(67, Michael Cacoyannis);
A Dandy in Aspic
(68, Anthony Mann and Laurence Harvey);
Otley
(68, Dick Clement). He was in his element in
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
(70, Wrede), though that performance hardly bears comparison with the one by John Mills in Vidor’s
War and Peace
.

After
To Catch a Spy
(71, Clement) and
She Stoops to Conquer
(71), he was out of movies for over ten years. But he returned with that baroque oddity,
The Dresser
(83, Peter Yates)—playing opposite Albert Finney. Yes, it’s a gay marriage story half in, half out of a tissue-paper closet, and it’s shameless mugging. But audiences liked it. The later work was tame:
Happy New Year
(87, John G. Avildsen);
Leonard Part 6
(87, Paul Weiland); as the mime who performs for children in Terezin in
The Last Butterfly
(91, Karel Kuchyna); as Derek Bentley’s poor dad in
Let Him Have It
(91, Peter Medak); as a voice in the animated
Famous Fred
(96, Joanna Quinn); reunited with Rita Tushingham in
The Boy from Mercury
(96, Martin Duffy);
Whatever Happened to Harold Smith?
(99, Peter Hewitt); good in
Last Orders
(01, Fred Schepisi); excellent as Newman Noggs in
Nicholas Nickleby
(02, Douglas McGrath);
Flood
(07, Tony Mitchell);
The Golden Compass
(07, Chris Weitz).

These movies showed nowhere near the quality he displayed in two memorable TV shows: with Finney again (officer and NCO in a sort of widower marriage) in
A Rather English Marriage
(98, Paul Seed) and as William Dorrit in the adaptation of
Little Dorrit
(08), as the ghost of bureaucracy half recollecting his own fatuous past.

Sir Noël Coward
(1899–1973), b. Teddington, England
There was a time, in the last fifteen years or so of his life, when you could believe—if you were inclined—that a vigorous, manly, and rough-spoken generation of actors were sweeping “Cowardy custard” off the English stage. And a good thing, too? For some people growing up then, Coward was a bit of a mystery: his later plays were not very good; his pose as a model of cool manners was regarded as effete or snobbish; and the well-intentioned determination to get down to the nitty-gritty left little room for Coward. He and the underspeak of
Brief Encounter
(45, David Lean) had become dated, and I daresay that hurt him, for a part of him was terribly anxious to be up-to-date (even if he once, à la Wilde, said that no pursuit left you looking more old-fashioned).

And yet, if you take a film like
North by Northwest
(1959), it’s hard to think that Cary Grant or James Mason could have carried on as they do but for Coward’s example and legacy. It may be argued that Grant and Mason—and others, not least Olivier—actually played the Coward type more intriguingly than the master ever managed. So he wasn’t that good an actor—or not on stage, where the limits of the day first restricted and then bored him. But how can one eliminate Noël Coward—his tone, his attitude, his way of speaking, his model—from the amazing invasion of Hollywood by actors born in England, often keeping their English voice and perversely trained to hide the point of the drama?

For Coward, it may have had as much to do with the need to veil gay yearnings as with the wish to suppress vulgar emotionalism; still, Coward more than anyone created (as author as much as actor) the manner of speaking that left us to read between the lines. Grant was actually much better at it than Olivier. And it’s possible that Grant himself hardly noticed the influence (that is not true for Olivier, who admitted it, and surely came very close to an affair with Coward when they did
Private Lives
together). I don’t think that matters. The way of acting had entered Grant’s mind. It affected his bearing and the meaning of his films. So there’s no need to dispute influence.

And we haven’t even got yet to
In Which We Serve
(42, Lean and Coward) and
This Happy Breed
(44, Lean) and Coward’s tremendous impact on the age of English (or British) actors that included Jack Hawkins, John Mills, Dirk Bogarde, David Niven, Trevor Howard (though he heard other voices), Eric Portman, Dennis Price, Nigel Patrick, and even Rex Harrison.

There are many incidentals about Coward that can get in the way: the fact that he had played in
Hearts of the World
(18, D. W. Griffith); his acting in
The Scoundrel
(35, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur); the chance that he could have been Harry Lime in
The Third Man;
the actual, older man in pictures like
Our Man in Havana
(60, Carol Reed);
Bunny Lake Is Missing
(65, Otto Preminger), and
Boom!
(68, Joseph Losey)—all interesting and acute but beside the point because he was no longer beautiful; to say nothing of the filmed plays, like
Design for Living
(33, Ernst Lubitsch), where Gary Cooper plainly doesn’t know what it’s all about; or even that the film of
Cavalcade
(33, Frank Lloyd) won best picture.

No, the influence is intimate and actorly, and it affects ideas of what a man, or a gentleman, is. And it certainly goes on. Listen to Harold Pinter and you will find the rhythms of Noël Coward, as well as the same awkward fascination with gayness. And now that the lust for male authenticity that so spurred the Method seems quaint, it’s much easier to see gender ambiguity in, say, Kevin Spacey, Johnny Depp, Ralph Fiennes, Rupert Everett, Jude Law, Matt Damon, Hugh Grant … and how about Anthony Hopkins in
Hannibal?

Brian Cox
, b. Dundee, Scotland, 1946
There it is, like a sweet plum in the pudding, in Brian Cox’s list of credits between someone called Dr. McGrigor in a TV
Life of Florence Nightingale
(85) and Henrik Ibsen in an educational series on
The Modern World: Ten Great Writers
, a little thing called
Manhunter
(86, Michael Mann), in which he played Dr. Hannibal Lecktor. And a very nice, polite, lethal Lecktor, too, before the grandstanding and the turning of the character into a smiling uncle and then adoring lover. And there is the career of Brian Cox in a mouthful of Christmas pudding—don’t bite too hard, there may be a silver sixpence lurking or Göring’s cyanide pellet. It’s somehow typical of Cox that he is the half-forgotten Lecktor or Lecter, the purists’ monster. Only a little over sixty, he has more than 150 credits to his name, many of them for television, many strictly for duty and a check. But don’t get the idea that habit has dulled the actor. Brian Cox has iron in his soul as well as plum pudding. He always bears watching.

Back in the 1960s, in Britain, he appeared on TV in
Z Cars
(69). He even played Josef Stalin in a thirty-minute show called
These Men Are Dangerous
(69). He did
The Master of Ballantrae
(75, Fiona Cumming);
In Celebration
(75, Lindsay Anderson); he was LeClaire in a serialization of
Thérèse Raquin
(80, Simon Langton), with Kate Nelligan; he was Burgundy in the Laurence Olivier
King Lear
(83, Michael Elliot); and then
Manhunter
.

He was in
Beryl Markham: A Shadow on the Sun
(88, Tony Richardson); he played Andrew Neil in
Secret Weapon
(90, Ian Sharp); he was the investigating policeman in
Hidden Agenda
(90, Ken Loach); he played the director on TV in
Six Characters in Search of an Author
(92, Bill Bryden);
Iron Will
(94, Charles Haid);
Rob Roy
(95, Michael Caton-Jones);
Braveheart
(95, Mel Gibson);
The Glimmer Man
(96, John Gray);
The Long Kiss Goodnight
(96, Renny Harlin);
Kiss the Girls
(97, Gary Fleder); Aneurin Bevan in
Food for Ravens
(97, Trevor Griffiths);
The Boxer
(97, Jim Sheridan);
Merchants of Venus
(98, Len Richmond); Dr. Guggenheim in
Rushmore
(98, Wes Anderson);
For Love of the Game
(99, Sam Raimi);
Complicity
(00, Gavin Millar); Göring in the miniseries
Nuremberg
(00, Yves Simoneau);
A Shot at Glory
(00, Michael Corrente).

He has graduated to more lofty projects by now, without ever really getting the lead roles he deserves:
The Affair of the Necklace
(01, Charles Shyer);
The Bourne Identity
(02, Doug Liman);
The Ring
(02, Gore Verbinski);
Adaptation
(02, Spike Jonze), playing Robert McKee, the screenwriter guru; excellent as the father in
25th Hour
(02, Spike Lee);
X2
(03, Bryan Singer);
The Reckoning
(03, Paul McGuigan); Agamemnon in
Troy
(04, Wolfgang Petersen);
The Bourne Supremacy
(04, Paul Greengrass);
Match Point
(05, Woody Allen);
Red Eye
(05, Wes Craven);
The Ringer
(05, Barry Blaustein); Langrishe in TV’s
Deadwood
(06);
Running with Scissors
(06, Ryan Murphy); Melvin Belli in
Zodiac
(07, David Fincher);
The Water Horse
(07, Jay Russell);
The Escapist
(08, Rupert Wyatt);
Tell-Tale
(09, Michael Cuesta).

Paul Cox
(Paulus Henriqus Benedictus Cox), b. Venlo, Netherlands, 1940
1975:
Illuminations
. 1977:
Inside Looking Out
. 1979:
Kostas
. 1981:
Lonely Hearts
. 1983:
Man of Flowers
. 1984:
My First Wife
. 1985:
Death and Destiny
. 1986:
Cactus
. 1987:
Vincent—The Life and Death of Vincent Van Gogh
(d). 1989:
Island
. 1990:
The Golden Braid
. 1991:
A Woman’s Tale
. 1992:
The Nun and the Bandit
. 1993:
Touch Me
(s). 1994:
Exile
. 1996:
Lust and Revenge
. 1997:
The Hidden Dimension
(d).
Molokai: The Story of Father Damien
. 2000:
Innocence
. 2002:
Nijinsky
. 2004:
The Human Touch
. 2008:
Salvation
.

So many directors have left Australia, it is important to stress that Cox only reached that land in his early twenties, bringing with him the anguished, visionary sensibility of one of his countrymen—Van Gogh. (Cox is the only Dutchman to have taken on the painter, in a heartfelt documentary in which John Hurt was the voice of Van Gogh.) In truth, Cox has not really used Australia. Rather, he has made his best pictures as intimate studies of solitude, madness, and dreams in faded middle-class settings that are occasionally illumined by the radiance of some lonely person’s vision.
Man of Flowers
is his best work, with Norman Kaye outstanding as the Magritte-like figure who loves beauty. The autobiographical
My First Wife
is one of the most unrelievedly tortured accounts of a marital breakdown.
Lonely Hearts
, the film that established Cox, is still his most accessible film, with touching performances from Kaye and Wendy Hughes.