It seems all but a right of passage for British actors to portray Winston Churchill, with Richard Burton, Albert Finney and Timothy Spall among the many thespians who have assayed the legendary prime minister. And in the past year, even American John Lithgow took to the role of the post-World War II Churchill for the Netflix series “The Crown”; in November, Gary Oldman will portray him in “Darkest Hour.”
On Friday, cinemagoers can see Brian Cox as the titular “Churchill,” in which he portrays the U.K. leader in the crucial hours leading up to the D-Day invasion to loosen the Nazis’ grip on Europe.
“John Lithgow and Gary Oldman’s [films] don’t have the name ’Churchill’ in the title. It sort of ratchets up the responsibility,” Mr. Cox, the 70-year-old Scotsman, told The Washington Times with a slight chuckle.
As “Churchill” opens, Allied forces are amassing on Britain’s south coast ready to hop the English Channel into occupied France. Mr. Cox’s Churchill, still haunted by his own massive failure as a military leader at Gallipoli during the First World War, stands hesitant lest a repeat of the slaughter that happened under his own command be repeated on the beaches of Normandy. It’s a stance that Gen. Dwight Eisenhower (John Slattery of “Mad Men”) finds impossible, leading to much shouting between the American and British camps.
“Churchill the performer, Churchill the great raconteur, Churchill the great speechmaker — these are all personality constructs. They’re not necessarily who Churchill is,” Mr. Cox said, adding that he hoped to get to the private man himself in his portrayal. “[The script] was such an original take on the real man and looking at him from a humanistic point of view and the difficulty of power and what power does,” he said.
Contrary to the blustery challenger of Hitler’s aggression seen early in the war, the Churchill of 1944 shown in the script by Alex von Tunzelmann is a broken-down, self-doubting man wracked by a lifelong battle with depression, which Mr. Cox said was euphemistically called “black dog” at the time. He was also notorious for consuming “consummate amounts” of alcohol and cigar smoking as a means to deal with unimaginable stress.
But despite the pressures of a world war and battling his own demons, Churchill exhibited a tremendous joy and zest for life, Mr. Cox said, as well as a wit he employed often, including in verbal sparring with both enemies and “frenemies” like playwright Noel Coward.
“He was a master of the putdown,” Mr. Cox said.
Additionally, Churchill’s perpetual status as an outsider led to the prime minister not taking himself especially seriously, though he viewed his responsibilities to his country and the war effort without even a hint of irony.
“There was nothing more serious than that to him,” Mr. Cox said. “But at the same time, I think he had this overwhelming humanity.”
Nevertheless, Churchill was disliked, both before and after the war, with his own Conservative party distrusting his decision-making — and even doubting his dire warnings about the rapidly mobilizing Nazi war machine.
“The Second World War was inevitable. Nobody wanted a war in 1938 after the First World War, which was an awful war,” Mr. Cox said. “Nobody wanted it to be inevitable, but [Churchill] knew it was going to have to happen.”
While Churchill’s contributions to the history of both the United Kingdom and the victory in World War II are not in dispute, scholars and critics even today still debate many of his unpopular views. This includes his initial opposition to women’s suffrage, his distaste for the Indian independence movement and particularly Mohandas K. Gandhi, and even his support of Edward VIII, the short-reigning monarch who abdicated the throne in 1936 after less than a year to marry his divorced love, the American Wallis Simpson.
Mr. Cox’s uncle once related to him a visit by Churchill to their hometown, where Churchill, then the area’s MP, was denounced by the townsfolk. Fighting off illness, Churchill was brought into town on a litter hoisted by several men.
“My uncle said to the guys that were carrying him, ’How much did he pay you? We’ll give you [double] if you drop him!’” Mr. Cox said.
But such shows that Churchill was no stranger to opposition, and was uniquely positioned to be the “man of his time” when war with Germany came in 1939.
“He was a man of destiny,” Mr. Cox said. “He was that rare thing that [Nelson] Mandela was, that Napoleon was. He came to the fore at the time we needed him.
“Nobody could broadcast like him. Nobody had that strength of performance.”
Indeed, despite his uncle’s distaste for the politician, Mr. Cox said his relative eventually gave credit to the prime minister.
“My uncle later said he would always give thanks to Churchill for winning the war,” he said.
“Churchill” also features two-time Oscar nominee Miranda Richardson as Clementine Churchill and James Purefoy as King George VI, who succeeded Edward following the abdication. (George was the father of the current monarch, Queen Elizabeth II.)
Mr. Cox, who has appeared in over 200 films and TV shows in his distinguished career — he was even the first actor to portray arch-villain Hannibal Lecter, in 1986’s “Manhunter” — called the script by Ms. Von Tunzelmann “Shakespearean” in its dealing with both Churchill’s doubts as well as his finding the strengths to continue to rouse Britannia to continue a necessary fight against Hitler’s forces.
“It’s like King Lear [saying] ’blow winds and crack your cheeks,’” Mr. Cox said of Ms. Von Tunzelmann’s parallels with Shakespeare’s writing. “It has to do with [Churchill’s] inner desperation.
“This is a rich character,” Mr. Cox said. “You can’t go wrong with this character if you do it right.”
“Churchill” opens Friday at the District’s Landmark E Street Cinema.
• Eric Althoff can be reached at twt@washingtontimes.com.
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