English
News
In the footsteps of a Saint
May 12, 2011
Catholic actor Charlie Cox is making waves across the Atlantic – and he’s about to hit the cinemas in his native UK playing a saint in a new movie. FAITH TODAY went to meet him.
How does it feel to be a saint? That’s something no-one alive can ever really know, since sainthood is only acknowledged after death: but up-and-coming actor Charlie Cox knows more about it than most.
Cox, 28, is the star of There Be Dragons, a new movie about the early life of St Josemaria Escriva, the Spaniard who founded Opus Dei. So – given that he’s a Catholic himself - how did it feel to Cox to walk in a saint’s shoes, and to portray his holiness on screen?
What struck him most, says Cox, is that ‘there seemed to have been no single moment when Josemaria was saintly... instead, what people who knew him spoke about and wrote about was a lifetime of consistently good decisions and a dedication of his entire life to God’. So in fact, he explains, portraying him meant being very human – and yet aware that decisions often had to be made that weren’t directed at other people, but were directed at God.
Playing Josemaria is the latest step on a path that’s fast feeling like the road to the big-time: Cox first appeared on the showbiz radar in 2007 when he got the role of Tristan Thorne in the movie Stardust, and he went on to play the Duke of Crowborough in the ITV drama Downton Abbey. And just a fortnight before we meet, he’s filmed his first episode of HBO’s prohibition drama Boardwalk Empire, the flagship programme of the new Sky Atlantic channel, in which he plays an immigrant from Northern Ireland with ties to the IRA. Cox says he’s loving the part: Steve Buscemi, who recently won a Gold Globe award for his portrayal of Enoch ‘Nucky’ Thompson in the series, is one of his all-time heroes, and he can hardly believe his luck in being cast with him.
‘Working with Steve feels amazing, I can’t believe how lucky I’ve been,’ he says, as we chat over coffee at a Madrid hotel on the morning of the premiere of There Be Dragons. He jetted in this morning from New York – he’ll be there filming Boardwalk Empire through the summer and, he says, he can’t imagine a better way of spending the next few months. ‘They’re the nicest bunch of people – and everyone is so confident about how good the series is, so there’s a great buzz about it.’
Working on Boardwalk Empire has taken him a long way from his Sussex roots. He grew up in Hearst Green, the son of publisher parents – and he was raised a Catholic, like his father, although he was educated at a non-Catholic independent school, Sherborne School in Dorset. ‘Only about 70 out of 700 boys were Catholics. We had to get up early on a Sunday to go to Mass at a local girls’ school... it would have been easy to skive off it, but actually we never did. I’ve always loved churches – even now, in a strange city, I’ll often wander around looking at churches.’
There was no history of acting in the family – bar a grandmother who had been at RADA before the second world war – but even as a youngster, Cox was smitten with the idea. ‘My mum and dad had a fantastic attitude to it,’ he says. ‘The school wanted me to go to university, play it in safe mode, have a back-up plan. But my parents came to see me act, and afterwards my dad sat me down and he said: ‘I think you’d be a fool not to pursue this’. And I don’t know whether I’d be here now if it hadn’t been for that one comment...’
Despite living in the US at the moment, and the fact that his parents spend most of their time these days in France, Cox says Britain will always be home – and he’s very close to his family. He has a brother, and three half siblings from his father’s first marriage, and his parents have flown to see him in Madrid while he’s over for the premiere of There Be Dragons.
After school, he spent a gap year working for a photographer – and even before he could take up a place at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, he’d landed the role of Theo in the movie dot the i. ‘An agent took a punt on me and put me up for the part,’ he says. ‘I’ve been incredibly lucky, and that was just one of my lucky breaks.’
But it’s not just luck – Cox is immensely likeable, and he’s obviously genuinely passionate about acting. He’s also been smart enough to realise that he can learn a huge amount from more seasoned actors – so he saw acting alongside Robert de Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer in Stardust, for example, as a fantastic opportunity to soak up knowledge. And he’s learnt lots more, too, from Roland Joffe, director of There Be Dragons, who was also the film-maker behind The Mission (about the early Jesuits in south America) and The Killing Fields (about the murderous Pol Pot regime in Cambodia), both of which were Oscar nominees.
‘I didn’t think twice about taking the part of Josemaria, and that was down to Roland,’ he says. ‘He’s such a great director – he really understands the processes that actors have to go through to give their best. I learnt so much from working with him.’
Given the subject-matter of There Be Dragons, Cox also spent time in the run-up to filming learning about Opus Dei, which has the status of a ‘personal prelature’ within the Catholic Church. ‘I visited several Opus Dei houses, and I went on a retreat and had a lot of help from an Opus Dei priest, Fr John Wauck.’
Before he made the film, he admits, he’d never heard of Josemaria – and all he knew about Opus Dei was what he’d read in Dan Brown’s book The Da Vinci Code. But researching Josemaria, he says, what struck him most was the saint’s humanity – and his ability, examined in the film, to forgive. ‘It was an example I had to put into practice, because one day when we were filming I returned to my trailer to find someone had broken in and cleaned the place out completely,’ he says. ‘They’d even taken my computer, and the charger, and even my clothes.
‘The following day I was due to film one of the big scenes in which Josemaria shows how he can forgive, and I remember thinking: this is really interesting. And the thing is that I did manage to forgive the guy who nicked my stuff.
‘And what I realised, through that incident, was that – though we think of forgiveness as something very moral and impressive, it’s actually something that works totally in your own favour. Because if you don’t forgive then you’re angry inside – and that anger doesn’t hurt the other person, but it really hurts you.’
Since filming finished for There Be Dragons, Cox has been working on another movie – Moby Dick, due to be released later this year – and now Boardwalk Empire. It all suggests, I tell him, that fame – which he’s told previous interviewers frightens him – could be beckoning. ‘It’s tricky,’ he says, candidly. ‘I’ve got friends who have gone on to extraordinary fame, and what I’ve realised through them is that it’s never quite as appealing as it promised to be.
‘On the other hand, like everyone else I want recognition. I like people to think I’m good at what I do. That’s human nature, isn’t it?’
Published in Faith Today Articles
How does it feel to be a saint? That’s something no-one alive can ever really know, since sainthood is only acknowledged after death: but up-and-coming actor Charlie Cox knows more about it than most.
What struck him most, says Cox, is that ‘there seemed to have been no single moment when Josemaria was saintly... instead, what people who knew him spoke about and wrote about was a lifetime of consistently good decisions and a dedication of his entire life to God’. So in fact, he explains, portraying him meant being very human – and yet aware that decisions often had to be made that weren’t directed at other people, but were directed at God.
Playing Josemaria is the latest step on a path that’s fast feeling like the road to the big-time: Cox first appeared on the showbiz radar in 2007 when he got the role of Tristan Thorne in the movie Stardust, and he went on to play the Duke of Crowborough in the ITV drama Downton Abbey. And just a fortnight before we meet, he’s filmed his first episode of HBO’s prohibition drama Boardwalk Empire, the flagship programme of the new Sky Atlantic channel, in which he plays an immigrant from Northern Ireland with ties to the IRA. Cox says he’s loving the part: Steve Buscemi, who recently won a Gold Globe award for his portrayal of Enoch ‘Nucky’ Thompson in the series, is one of his all-time heroes, and he can hardly believe his luck in being cast with him.
There seemed to have been no single moment when Josemaria was saintly... instead, what people who knew him spoke about and wrote about was a lifetime of consistently good decisions and a dedication of his entire life to God
‘Working with Steve feels amazing, I can’t believe how lucky I’ve been,’ he says, as we chat over coffee at a Madrid hotel on the morning of the premiere of There Be Dragons. He jetted in this morning from New York – he’ll be there filming Boardwalk Empire through the summer and, he says, he can’t imagine a better way of spending the next few months. ‘They’re the nicest bunch of people – and everyone is so confident about how good the series is, so there’s a great buzz about it.’
Working on Boardwalk Empire has taken him a long way from his Sussex roots. He grew up in Hearst Green, the son of publisher parents – and he was raised a Catholic, like his father, although he was educated at a non-Catholic independent school, Sherborne School in Dorset. ‘Only about 70 out of 700 boys were Catholics. We had to get up early on a Sunday to go to Mass at a local girls’ school... it would have been easy to skive off it, but actually we never did. I’ve always loved churches – even now, in a strange city, I’ll often wander around looking at churches.’
There was no history of acting in the family – bar a grandmother who had been at RADA before the second world war – but even as a youngster, Cox was smitten with the idea. ‘My mum and dad had a fantastic attitude to it,’ he says. ‘The school wanted me to go to university, play it in safe mode, have a back-up plan. But my parents came to see me act, and afterwards my dad sat me down and he said: ‘I think you’d be a fool not to pursue this’. And I don’t know whether I’d be here now if it hadn’t been for that one comment...’
Despite living in the US at the moment, and the fact that his parents spend most of their time these days in France, Cox says Britain will always be home – and he’s very close to his family. He has a brother, and three half siblings from his father’s first marriage, and his parents have flown to see him in Madrid while he’s over for the premiere of There Be Dragons.
After school, he spent a gap year working for a photographer – and even before he could take up a place at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, he’d landed the role of Theo in the movie dot the i. ‘An agent took a punt on me and put me up for the part,’ he says. ‘I’ve been incredibly lucky, and that was just one of my lucky breaks.’
But researching Josemaria, he says, what struck him most was the saint’s humanity – and his ability, examined in the film, to forgive
‘I didn’t think twice about taking the part of Josemaria, and that was down to Roland,’ he says. ‘He’s such a great director – he really understands the processes that actors have to go through to give their best. I learnt so much from working with him.’
Given the subject-matter of There Be Dragons, Cox also spent time in the run-up to filming learning about Opus Dei, which has the status of a ‘personal prelature’ within the Catholic Church. ‘I visited several Opus Dei houses, and I went on a retreat and had a lot of help from an Opus Dei priest, Fr John Wauck.’
Before he made the film, he admits, he’d never heard of Josemaria – and all he knew about Opus Dei was what he’d read in Dan Brown’s book The Da Vinci Code. But researching Josemaria, he says, what struck him most was the saint’s humanity – and his ability, examined in the film, to forgive. ‘It was an example I had to put into practice, because one day when we were filming I returned to my trailer to find someone had broken in and cleaned the place out completely,’ he says. ‘They’d even taken my computer, and the charger, and even my clothes.
‘The following day I was due to film one of the big scenes in which Josemaria shows how he can forgive, and I remember thinking: this is really interesting. And the thing is that I did manage to forgive the guy who nicked my stuff.
‘And what I realised, through that incident, was that – though we think of forgiveness as something very moral and impressive, it’s actually something that works totally in your own favour. Because if you don’t forgive then you’re angry inside – and that anger doesn’t hurt the other person, but it really hurts you.’
Since filming finished for There Be Dragons, Cox has been working on another movie – Moby Dick, due to be released later this year – and now Boardwalk Empire. It all suggests, I tell him, that fame – which he’s told previous interviewers frightens him – could be beckoning. ‘It’s tricky,’ he says, candidly. ‘I’ve got friends who have gone on to extraordinary fame, and what I’ve realised through them is that it’s never quite as appealing as it promised to be.
‘On the other hand, like everyone else I want recognition. I like people to think I’m good at what I do. That’s human nature, isn’t it?’
Published in Faith Today Articles
Prayer
RSS
FACEBOOK
TWITTER
YOUTUBE