(Image: PA)
THIS week’s Icon frequently plays burly, stern authority figures, and sometimes Santa Claus. Highly successful yet humble, he suffers still from imposter syndrome and is – ye ken – an opsimath. But we’ll come to that later (as opsimaths tend to do).
He remains vexed at never getting sex scenes, and his adopted stage surname comes from ancient Greek “kosmos”, meaning “order”, “beauty” or “universe”.
More prosaically, James Cosmo – for it is he – borrowed the moniker from his granny. It was her middle name. You’ll know James from – well, take your pick – Braveheart, Game of Thrones, Highlander, Trainspotting, Troy, Jack Ryan, The Chronicles of Narnia, Ben-Hur, Wonder Woman, His Dark Materials, Whisky Galore (remake), we could go on, and without mentioning Celebrity Big Brother at that.
Boy’s been there and done them. Got the stretch XL T-shirt to prove it. If only he’d stuck in, he could have been an excellent labourer. But, both inspired and discouraged by his father, he opted for acting, never yet feeling quite at home in the profession. Give it time. He’s only been at it 60 years.
James Ronald Gordon Copeland was probably (accounts vary) born in Clydebank in 1947. At that time, according to most sources, he was not yet 6ft 3in.
His father, James Copeland, was a jobbing actor, who was pals with Sean Connery and Peter O’Toole. Young James played cricket on Hampstead Heath with the former while his dad drank in the pub with the latter.
In 2017, talking to The Herald, he described his relationship with his father as “typical west of Scotland”, explaining: “I’m sure he loved me but of course he never told me. And it was a strange upbringing. I lived in two very different worlds.”
Cosmo has recounted travelling from Glasgow to London, aged 8, with his mother Helen and sister Laura, in a gypsy wagon pulled by a grey horse named Bobby. This was after his father had landed West End theatre work.
It was, he said, a “very strange” time. “My parents were sort of together, my mother worked at Singers sewing machine factory in Clydebank and my father in the West End.”
No class act
HE attended Hartfield Primary School in Dumbarton. At secondary, he was far from a model schoolboy, telling the Guardian in 2021 how he “bunked off every Friday afternoon for a year” (boy after my own heart).
He got into acting because he was “pretty useless at everything else”, adding: “Actually, I was quite a good labourer but I didn’t want to spend my life labouring. That had been a step up from working at Arnott Young ship-breakers when I was 16. I thought I’d been promoted when I was given a shovel!”
Knowing what a “tough life” it was, his father never encouraged his acting aspirations, other than introducing him to the director of Dr Finlay’s Casebook and telling him: “After this, you are on your own, son.”
So. on his own, he had a few acting stints, returning periodically to labouring or bar work, before inevitably gravitating towards yonder London, where he secured a couple of small parts before The Battle of Britain film (1969) came up.
“[It] was a big job for me,” he told the Sunday Post. “Every film star you know was in it – Christopher Plummer, Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine – it was awe-inspiring. To come from up a close in Clydebank to that made me question what was going on.”
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In the 1970s and 80s, his substantial physical presence saw him typically play police officers, while his nationality made him the token Scot, inhabiting characters with names like Jock McLeish (Minder) and, er, Glasgow McDade (The Onedin Line).
Mel on Earth
HOWEVER, in 1994, he received a phone call to play a part in a film with real heft: Braveheart. It was actually his wife who picked up the phone in their one-bedroom Twickenham flat. Covering the receiver, she mouthed: “It’s Mel Gibson!”
Though Cosmo had met Gibson at a casting six months earlier, he’d never given it another thought and believed the call was just a pal having a laugh. But he took it … and the part – “You bet!”
The role of Campbell in Braveheart lit a rocket under Cosmo’s career. And he found the weeks spent in Glen Nevis making the film “fantastic” as well as bringing home the financial effect such a project can have on a local community.
Beyond Braveheart, Cosmo is probably best known for playing Jeor Morman, Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, in popular sadistic entertainment Game of Thrones. A friend read the books on his behalf.
“[H]e’d say: ‘Well, James, this has happened and that’s happened and you’re still alive, kid.’ I’d say: ‘Oh, good, good.’ Then, one day, he said: ‘James, they’re drinking beer out of your skull.’ So my death wasn’t exactly a surprise.”
The only downside of the role, he told the Guardian, was his character’s avowed celibacy. “In that show where everybody’s getting their kit off everywhere, I draw the short straw. In my whole career … I have only had a romantic kiss with one woman, in His Dark Materials. I’ve never had a love scene.” Aw, shucks.
Never mind. Everybody loves him. Filmhounds magazine describes him as “the definition of a character actor” with a “formidable presence and even more intense looks”.
He admits to still feeling “very nervous and very vulnerable” on set and is the opposite of the egotistical star. “[N]ot many people say to a plumber, ‘You are a really great plumber.’ But he’s doing a job the same as I am. And I get paid really handsomely. So I consider myself really privileged.”
Wise Words
HAVING eschewed education in early life, he is now extremely well read. That’s how he came across Alan Bennett’s use of “opsimath”, someone who learns or comes to wisdom later in life.
In this vein, he has no regrets about having played so many authority figures. All actors were typecast to an extent, he has said. In his early career, he played “very physical” characters but was happy now to be “the older, gruffer authoritarian figure”.
Older and wiser, he keeps his achievements in perspective. “I was in my mid-40s when Braveheart happened. As you get older, you lose that testosterone-driven success thing. Am I going to be impressed by money or fame or whatever, really? I don’t think so, no. I mean, a day’s fly fishing is all I’m really aiming for.”