BRIAN COX
“THE ONLY PERSON I COULD NOT PLAY IN A MILLION YEARS WOULD BE DONALD TRUMP”
Now here’s a funny thing: Total Film has interviewed Brian Cox before, just three or four years ago, and knows him to be pleasant, garrulous company; and yet the nerves are prickling as the time of our Zoom meet draws nigh, and a stab of fear pierces the heart as his granite face and hulking shoulders suddenly fill the screen. It doesn’t even matter that his image is blurry and the message ‘Brian Cox has low bandwidth’ pops up at the bottom of the screen - no number of technical issues can diminish this titan.
The reason for Total Film’s fretfulness is Cox’s performance as Logan Roy in HBO’s gold-standard drama, Succession. The patriarch of a global media and entertainment conglomerate, Roy, in his early eighties, is deciding which of his four children - Connor (Alan Ruck), Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Shiv (Sarah Snook) - should replace him as CEO. Naturally there are Machiavellian power plays: Roy’s entitled offspring make for a cannibalistic clan, and outside threats gather as numerous cutthroat rivals wait, knives sharpened, in the wings. But Roy is not about to go gentle into that good night. A towering presence, he dominates every chamber and chopper he (dis)graces, usually telling all and sundry to “fuck the fuck off.”
Cox, of course, has made a 60-year career out of playing bad guys and authority figures. Born in Dundee in June 1946 to a spinner mother and shopkeeper father, he left school at 15, and worked at the Dundee Repertory Theatre before attending the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. In 1965, when he graduated, the likes of Albert Finney, Peter O’Toole and Richard Harris were smashing through class barriers, and Cox duly won roles on stage and in television. His bigscreen break finally came in 1986, playing Dr. Hannibal Lecktor (as it was then credited) in Michael Mann’s Manhunter.
For many, it remains the definitive portrayal of Thomas Harris’ urbane cannibal - more coolly cerebral and less playfully gothic than Anthony Hopkins’ Oscar-winning turn in , and not nearly as show-and-tell as Mads Mikkelsen’s take in Bryan Fuller’s NBC. Cox has since racked up another couple of hundred credits in film, TV, theatre, radio and videogames, with highlights including his performances in , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and, of course, . Ridiculously, he has never been nominated for an Oscar, but has two Olivier Awards to his name, and an Emmy and a Golden Globe to go with them.
