Brian Cox at 80: 5 Great Performances That Have Nothing to Do With Logan Roy

Brian Cox turns 80 today. This is remarkable. No, not just because the number is a neat multiple of 10, but also because it is the same age as Logan Roy, perhaps the definitive role in Cox’s glorious career spanning more than half a century, was in the first episode of HBO’s Succession. But Cox is more than Logan Roy, and the conversation around this particular role has a way of flattening what has come before to the point it may seem Cox did not exist in corporeal form till Jesse Armstrong brought the HBO series into being.

Cox was acting before most of the actors sharing screens in the show with him were even born. And he is still there now. And these five great performances prove that he has been a powerhouse for as long as he has been acting. These performances are ranked, but even the “worst” of these can teach an aspiring actor more than an entire drama school degree.

5 The King Who Commanded Every Scene in Troy (2004)

The discourse around Christopher Nolan’s upcoming The Odyssey has revived Troy in the popular imagination. Those who saw it when it was released know it wasn’t a good movie. That being said, it had good bits. One example is the late Peter O’Toole as Priam, acting for both himself and Brad Pitt in the scene where he begs Achilles (Pitt) for the body of his son Hector. Cox played Agamemnon, the king of the Greeks who invaded Troy over Helen. He approached the role with exactly the kind of shameless grandeur the film required.

Cox knew that Agamemnon was essentially a political creature; he was arrogant, ambitious, calculating, and confident in his own worth. He portrayed Agamemnon as an embodiment of the greed depicted in the film by taking advantage of his brother’s wounded sense of pride to build an empire. Cox plays him without vanity or apology, all sovereign contempt and barely suppressed glee.

The movie, however, remains average at best despite multiple excellent performances. Pitt himself has revealed that he hated filming Troy chiefly because of its intense focus on his character, Achilles.

Where to watch (USA): Rent on Apple TV

4 The Man Who Made Mutant Hatred Feel Real in X2: X-Men United (2003)

Cox is such a Shakespearean actor that it is odd to see him in something as commercial as a superhero movie. But then this particular film also featured Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart. Cox makes the movie’s Big Bad, Stryker, as a man you have met. He is a mid-level government operative who has convinced himself that what he is doing is pest control, and not genocide. 

The aforementioned Shakespearean training is what makes him so effective in the role. He knows how to make ideology sound like common sense and how to make a bureaucrat’s cruelty land. X2 remains one of the best movies in the X-Men franchise.

Where to watch (USA): Disney+

3 The Father Who Destroyed You in Eight Minutes in 25th Hour (2002)

Spike Lee‘s 25th Hour is Edward Norton‘s film in the sense that a hurricane belongs to the eye. It is the story of a drug dealer’s last 24 hours of freedom before a seven-year prison sentence, written by David Benioff (the same David who would later co-write Game of Thrones with D. B. Weiss). The film is remarkable and Cox is in it for perhaps half an hour total. He plays the role of James Brogan, Monty’s father, a man whose every scene is an exercise in what goes unsaid between fathers and sons who have run out of road. 

There is a scene late in the film — a monologue, really — that is among the finest pieces of screen acting Cox has ever delivered, which means it is among the finest pieces of screen acting of the century. 25th Hour is also one of Spike Lee’s most underrated movies.

Where to watch (USA): Rent on Prime Video

2 The Nazi Who Won Him an Emmy in Nuremberg (2000)

This is unrelated to last year’s Nuremberg movie. The challenge Cox set himself in this series is the same challenge the Nuremberg prosecutors faced: how do you make a jury understand that evil at this scale is not monstrous in the way we need it to be? Hermann Göring, the man Cox portrayed, was charming, funny, vain, strategically brilliant, and utterly without remorse. 

Cox does not soften any of that. He simply plays the intelligence and lets the horror accumulate in the gap between how engaging the man is and what he did. It is the performance of someone who understood that the most important thing about Göring was not the war crimes but how utterly unconcerned and unaware he was of his evil nature. 

Cox went on to win the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his performance. Cox has always been eerily convincing at playing evil men. The next entry is another proof.

Where to watch (USA): Britbox

1 The Original Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter (1986)

Anthony Hopkins‘ turn in the role famously won him an Oscar, but Cox’s performance is arguably the better one. We know many, if not most, will disagree with that, and that’s okay. The Silence of the Lambs was a phenomenon, and Hopkins had the good fortune to arrive in the right film at the right moment. That account is true as far as it goes. But it misses something more interesting. 

Cox’s Lecter (spelled Lecktor in Michael Mann‘s film, a small orthographic distance that stands for a considerably larger creative one) is not theatrical. He is not the cannibal Renaissance man like Hopkins’ Lecter. Cox’s version is quiet, and he is ordinary, and he is behind glass, and frightening in the manner of a locked door, insofar as he is scary precisely because of what one cannot know what’s behind the door without opening it. Cox plays him as someone socially functional and fundamentally unknowable. This is probably what real psychopathy looks like. And no wonder, for Cox studied real-world serial killer Ted Bundy to craft his performance (via Woman’s World).

Where to watch (USA): Prime Video

Here is every movie and show in the list in a nutshell:

Title	Director	Main Cast	Premise	IMDb (as of June 1, 2026)	Rotten Tomatoes (as of June 1, 2026)
Manhunter (1986)	Michael Mann	William Petersen, Brian Cox, Joan Allen, Tom Noonan	An FBI profiler comes out of retirement to hunt a serial killer, consulting the imprisoned Hannibal Lecktor to do it	7.2/10	90% | 77%
Nuremberg (2000)	Yves Simoneau	Alec Baldwin, Brian Cox, Christopher Plummer, Max von Sydow	The Allied prosecution of Nazi war criminals after WWII, centred on the battle of wills between Justice Robert Jackson and Hermann Göring	7.3/10	N\A | 72%
X2: X-Men United (2003)	Bryan Singer	Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Brian Cox	A government operative launches a full assault on Xavier’s school and the mutant population, forcing the X-Men and Magneto into an uneasy alliance	7.4/10	85% | 85%
25th Hour (2002)	Spike Lee	Edward Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Pepper, Brian Cox	A New York drug dealer spends his final 24 hours of freedom before a seven-year prison sentence	7.6/10	79% | 85%
Troy (2004)	Wolfgang Petersen	Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Brian Cox	The Trojan War, as Agamemnon uses his brother’s wounded pride as cover for imperial conquest	7.3/10	53% | 74%

Which of these performances surprised you most? And if you think we’ve missed a Brian Cox role that belongs on this list, tell us in the comments!