Veteran actor Brian Cox has said voting 'yes' for Scottish independence is not about being "anti-English".
The 68-year-old - whose numerous Hollywood roles include appearances in the Bourne and X-Men franchises - admitted he is very much in favour of Scotland becoming an independent country, but said of Britain, "We're part of the same... we're brothers."
Cox - who starred as William Wallace's uncle in Mel Gibson's Braveheart - said of the referendum: "It means a lot. It's something that I've come to very late in life.
"It's based on my own history and having lived in 'North Britain' as a wee boy, and having seen Scotland become more and more its own country. I never ever thought I'd feel this way, but I'm for it."
He went on: "But that being said, it doesn't mean that we're separate. We're part of the same... we're cousins, we're brothers, we still are.
"It's not an anti-English thing, none of that. It's about separate autonomy which is different. And that's what gets confused in people, they think it's something about, 'We don't want England.' It's not about that.
"What we want is democracy, what we want is egalitarianism and what we want is certain things that have been missing down here for quite a while, particularly in the regions of England.
"And I come to Scottish independence from very much the position of being an Anglophile. Actually it's as much about England as it is about Scotland."
Cox stars as former Manchester United manager Sir Matt Busby in new film Believe. Busby, who died in 1994 aged 84, famously cheated death in 1958 when he and his team were involved in a plane crash in Munich.
Set in the early 1980s, the fictional film sees Sir Matt come out of retirement to coach a team of young working class boys for an upcoming local league cup.
Cox said of the role: "When you play somebody who's famous you want to get your own view of them and get in their skin and get in their essence.
"And it was just an honour to play somebody like Matt because of his history and what he did, and then this extraordinary tragedy that happened to him
"So from an actor's point of view it was tremendous fuel. I loved the whole notion of Matt and I remember my own feelings about him, because he was quite a hero figure for me as a child in Scotland. So it was a joy."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article