Credits: Far Out / Amy Martin Photography
Thu 4 December 2025 10:30, UK
It would be an understatement to say that Brian Cox hates an awful lot of things about the acting business and the people who populate it, which makes it borderline remarkable that there’s only one role from his entire career that he regrets playing.
To illustrate just how mind-blowing that is, even if you ignore the fact he’s one of the industry’s most notorious curmudgeons, he’s among the most prolific performers of the last half-century. Since making his stage debut in the late 1960s, Cox has amassed hundreds upon hundreds of credits.
Almost 250 of them, in fact, covering everything from theatrical productions, feature films, TV movies, ongoing series, video games, cameo appearances, adverts, and even a Harry Styles music video, for some reason. That’s a shitload of work to put in, and there’s still only a solitary part he wishes he hadn’t taken.
You’d think that someone as outwardly miserable as the erstwhile Logan Roy would have more skeletons in his closet, based largely on the fact that he’s become so increasingly cantankerous. Daniel Day-Lewis? Fuck him. Johnny Depp? Fuck him, too. Steven Seagal? He can piss off. Method acting? Bugger off. Ben Kingsley? Word-for-word, “Fuck off”.
He’s cut from the same cloth as Anthony Hopkins, which explains his apathy to everything that happens between ‘action’ and ‘cut’. The Golden Globe, Bafta, Primetime Emmy, and Olivier Award winner has always loved his job; he just carries a clear and obvious disdain for many of the people he’s crossed paths with over the years.
As for his solitary regret, it came in 2003’s period-set mystery, The Reckoning. Directed by Paul McGuigan, Paul Bettany headlined the cast as a young priest who goes on the run after accidentally killing a man who caught him mid-tryst with his wife. Cox is only the fourth-billed name in the ensemble, with Willem Dafoe and Vincent Cassel taking precedence, but it was an experience he’d rather forget.
When Radio Times asked him if there were any of the 200+ roles he’d played that he’d want stricken from the record, there was only one. “It was a very good script, but my daughter wasn’t well at the time, and I didn’t get on with the director,” Cox explained. “Some makeup went into my eyes, and I couldn’t see for two days, and they had to get a doctor in to sort me out.”
Apart from that, the rest of his career is gravy; “Otherwise, I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve ever done,” he said. “I’ve been very lucky.” He must have had some serious run-ins with McGuigan if he’s one of the main factors behind the only production the Succession favourite has ever been involved with that he wished he hadn’t bothered his arse to do, especially relative to the sheer volume of parts he’s played.
One out of 240-odd is still very good going, with the actual acting part of being an actor the one thing that Cox will never have a bad word to say about. Everything else? As he’s shown numerous times, it’s open season.
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