In a new interview tied to The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim that ends up being mostly about Succession (perhaps unsurprisingly), Brian Cox spoke about what it was like to be the guy who played Hannibal Lecter on screen first… a few years before Anthony Hopkins’ Oscar-winning performance in The Silence of the Lambs made everyone think he’d originated the role.
The veteran actor, who since 1986 has carved out his own share of legendary performances, has made peace with what could’ve been an epic thespian feud. “Well, it’s a different character,” he told the Hollywood Reporter. “I mean, it’s like playing Hamlet. Everybody’s going to have their own Hamlet. I chose to play it the way the director Michael Mann and I decided to play it. Tony played it brilliantly. I mean, I had to go to Paris to see it because I couldn’t bring myself to see it in London.”
Asked for clarification on the last part of his answer, Cox explained, “Because people knew that I was the other Hannibal, and I was worried about them saying, ‘You’re comparing Hannibal Lecters’ and all that. But we played it the way we played it. Tony decided to take it down another route. And of course, Tony’s was a huge success, and he got the Oscar and he made a lot of money out of it. I made something like 10 grand.”
But the one rule that’s stuck with both, apparently, is that Cox and Hopkins do not talk about Hannibal Lecter. “I did an interview with a newspaper, and the headline in the newspaper was that I was the first Hannibal Lecter. Well, that was true, but it sounded like I was boasting about it and I wasn’t. And then I woke up one afternoon and the phone started ringing and all hell broke loose … Tony’s then-missus rang my agent and said, ‘Tony’s a bit upset about that.’ So I rang my agent and I said, ‘Look, I apologize.’ Tony and I have worked together a couple of times since. We never talk about it. And that’s a rule that we never would.”
For those wondering, THR didn’t bring up Mads Mikkelsen’s take on the character on the TV series Hannibal—so we’re still wondering what Cox thought of that version of the sophisticated serial killer. With that in mind, you can head to THR to read the full interview.
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