Brian Cox has produced one of the funniest, most rip-roaring, irreverent and candid showbusiness memoirs this season, full of lively mockery ... Cox has a wonderful eye and ear for the absurd ... Cox’s book is like a transcription of a pub or after-dinner monologue: clever, perceptive, wandering back and forth chronologically ... Cox hops from subject to subject, amplifying themes, picking up where he left off. There are lots of asides and digressions, as in the best talk. 'We touched on it before' is a typical phrase. It is loose, baggy, brilliant.
This volume is simply a delight, so much so that it’s tempting to consume it in one sitting. It’s snarky and cutting in a sometimes take-no-prisoners way as befits a waif brought up poor on the hardscrabble streets of Dundee, Scotland, but almost always funny ... Although Cox begins with his birth and family, he soon eludes chronology in favor of a nimbler narrative that more resembles a late-night monologue delivered at a favorite pub. It is chockablock with sharply etched portraits of all the names in lights ... Cox is not shy about expressing his opinions ... Cox is just as tough on himself—well, almost as tough—as he is on others ... Cox is possessed of something unexpected, something rarely found in the memoirs of entertainers, something that for want of a better word can only be called wisdom ... Mesmerizing.
I was desperate for tidbits to tide me over during the long wait for Season 4 [of Succession. Well, there aren’t many ... Cox writes eloquently about his origins in Dundee, Scotland, as the youngest of five children ... At a time when theater, the fabulous invalid, is straitjacketed by the pandemic, it’s heartening and a little wistful-making to have it recalled in all its messy midcentury glory ... Cox, who prefers cannabis to drink, can ramble on a bit. If times ever get lean again, it’s easy to imagine him doing bedtime stories for a sleep app ... Like many actors, Cox treads more nimbly on the boards than in his personal life ... On the page, at least, he is present, lively and pouring forth, though the hints of his distinctive burr may send you heading for the audiobook instead.
Piquant, digressive ... [The memoir] tracks his journey from embattled working-class lad in Dundee, Scotland, to, at age 75, improbable pop-culture icon — and which forfeits none of the spiky candor that got him there ... He doesn’t mind venting a bit.
Putting The Rabbit In The Hat is one of the best showbiz memoirs ever written, but its quality comes at the expense of the feelgood froth that usually fills such books. Cox is as honest here as he is on stage and screen ... The book has a kind of brutal integrity ... Everyone loves a rags-to-riches story, and Cox is highly informative about the craft of his art. But the account of his climb up the theatrical ladder...is the dullest bit of the book ... More entertainingly, Cox constantly carps at other stars ... The book isn’t all agitprop. It’s as funny as it is furious ... Cox quotes advice from the director Lindsay Anderson: ‘Don’t just do something, stand there.’ Brian Cox has done everything, and with this book he leaves everyone else standing.
As an actor, Brian Cox can convince his audience of anything ... As a writer, Cox has somewhat less panache. His memoir is a perfectly readable, straightforward account of the 72-year-old’s life ... In the context of the celebrity memoir, it more or less ticks the boxes: there’s a bit of name dropping, some gossipy titbits and a window into a world unlike our own ... The book is at its most compelling when Cox reflects on the craft of acting. His interest in taking moment and circumventing it, being at home in slowness, understanding character, and creating parts in a film 'where the character itself might be quite bland, but the actor makes it impactful' is infectious ... The book is also strong on class. The narrative has a rags-to-riches arc, but not one that bolsters the myth of capitalist meritocracy ... An offhand, irreverent tone seems to be what Cox is going for, and though he’s not quite as good at it on the page as he is onscreen, he still reads the room quite well ... In the end, what’s most compelling about this book is simply the legendary figure at its centre ... It's interesting enough.
It helps, when you’re reading an autobiography, if you can hear the author’s voice. Brian Cox’s rasping tones bellow forth from the pages of Putting the Rabbit in the Hat ... [A] bluff and breezy memoir ... If there’s a single word that sums up his approach to all this, it’s honesty ... Cox has great war stories about working with drunk actors back in the day ... All of this is recalled with bluff good humour, and makes one pine for the time when theatre was suffused with a rebellious, rock ’n’ roll sensibility. Some reviewers have discerned a certain flatness in Cox’s writing, but he’s an actor, not an author, and he certainly knows how to tell a story ... Cox’s book is digressive and gossipy, as all celebrity biographies should be. It’s also very funny, and as salty as you would expect from the man who has conclusively proved that there are at least 50 different ways of saying f*** off.
What explains the gruff-meets-bitchy tone of Putting the Rabbit in the Hat? Cox grew up poor in Dundee, Scotland, and is now 75 years old. Being willing to speak directly and with expertise, even or especially when the subject doesn’t want to hear it, is almost a moral tenet of his generation ... With his dry wit, down-to-earth, slightly macho vibe, and a technique honed across decades in provincial repertory, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Broadway, and the BBC, Cox is an economical performer and intolerant of profligacy. Like a champion swimmer, he simply has good technique and disapproves of splashing ... you can put the book down to watch (or listen, whatever) along as you read. In this respect, Putting the Rabbit in the Hat is an exemplary syllabus ... Cox has a sort of old-fashioned masculinity that means he gets to have it both ways—to be a gossip and a down-to-earth shopkeeper’s son. In the book, he’s pleasingly horrible, often in ways that are genuinely insightful. But the bluster can all be a bit convenient, especially when it comes to the stickier wickets of his acquaintance ... His excursus on 'woke' is lamentable and best passed over quickly. Meanwhile, Woody Allen and Mel Gibson both come in for hearty rounds of endorsement, while he claims grandly and hazily that Harvey Weinstein gave him the creeps ... It’s in these sleight-of-hand moments, where Coxian acuity might actually be helpful for understanding his place in the culture, that he slips into vagueness ... Cox is a heavyweight who is clearly enjoying his limelight reprise.
His memoir is both an entertaining and anecdotal tour through his career and a perceptive piece of introspection on his personal life ... He has a marvelous way of sprinkling less than glowing yet informed opinions on various films and actors throughout the text without seeming critical (most of the time), and it’s nice to hear someone being truly forthright ... An enjoyable and conversational backstage pass to the life of a highly respected character actor.
Cox is probably better known by his fellow United Kingdom audience, which makes his new memoir, Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, a bit of a one-trick pony. The vast majority of people he writes about will be unfamiliar to all but the most ardent theater fans ... I often find that books like this serve as a form of therapy for the writer, a chance to look back at certain events and juxtapose them with the way things have turned out ... He is self-effacing and honest about his flaws, more than a few of which he attributes to his troubled childhood ... Of course, it’s up to the author (there is no co-writer credited) to decide what to include or leave out, but some readers might feel like something is missing. Fans looking for dirt will no doubt be disappointed, especially when it comes to inside dope on Succession. Which is most likely why Cox decided to publish the book now.
Candid ... Cox isn’t one to sugarcoat his opinions ... He doesn’t shy away from his own flaws or his struggles with 'deep-seated insecurity.' While this doesn’t exactly break new ground as a celebrity memoir, its prickly honesty is delightfully refreshing.
