After a decades-long slump, the actor’s career came roaring back with the role of Connor Roy. He talks about his 80s success, his ‘attitude problems’ and his excitement about Succession’s new series

Alan Ruck is talking to me by video about the present, but he appears to be sitting in the past. The present we are discussing is the forthcoming third season of Succession, the wildly adored HBO series about plutocracies and dysfunctional families, created by Jesse Armstrong, a co-creator of Peep Show. Ruck plays Connor, the neglected eldest son of a media magnate, Logan Roy (Brian Cox). Like all the actors on the show – as the Guardian’s unofficial Succession correspondent, I have interviewed Cox and Jeremy Strong – Ruck has thought deeply about his character and is very eloquent on the subject. It is, however, a little hard to focus on what he’s saying because the...