Brian Cox names the worst character he’s ever played
Having played a wide range of character roles across a career of genuine excellence, it’s fair to say that Brian Cox has seen all that the human experience has to offer. From moments of selfless kindness to acts of sheer barbarity, whether on screen or on stage, Cox has dived headfirst into the narrative arts and learned much about what makes us tick.
As a Shakespearean actor at the Royal National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Dundee-born actor was able to explore the nature of human malice, avarice, honour and everything in between as a result of the Bard’s many brilliant works, but even when Cox made the transition to cinema and television, he would still be faced with difficult human emotion.
For instance, he portrayed the fictional cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter and the paedophile Big John Harrigan in the 2001 film L.I.E. and in television, later grew a reputation for playing one of the most notorious bastards in the history of the medium, media mogul Logan Roy in Succession.
Speaking with Rolling Stone, Cox once explained how his age has allowed him to understand more about his characters, noting, “I’m at the age now where a role comes along, and it just happens to fit like a glove. I know enough of these types of animals to create them from the ground up — I’ve seen them, I’ve met them, I’ve talked to them. I may not like them, but you can’t judge them.”
Cox went on to admit that he’s frequently played a number of “contentious characters” throughout his career and pointed out the one with the most flaws. “Human beings are full of flaws. And some flaws are greater than others,” he said. “About 20 years ago, I played Hermann Göring in a thing about the Nuremberg Trials. There was probably not a worse person to play.”
“Well, I mean, I played Hannibal Lecter, but you know – not a worse real person,” the actor added. “And I really began to understand where he was coming from. No sympathy, just empathy.” It was in the 2000 television docudrama Nuremberg that Cox played the German politician, military leader and convicted war criminal Göring, who was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party of Germany.
Still, despite his reputation for evil, Cox found something within Göring that he was able to interrogate. “You think, what did the First World War do to Germany?” he asked himself. “The Treaty of Versailles had kicked the shit out of them. Suddenly, this young Austrian kid is starting to say these outrageous things, and Göring comes back from Sweden to be his frontman. It was interesting to follow the line to see how he got to that point.”
Göring had helped to create the Gestapo and subsequently assumed the position of the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe. Later, Göring was set to be the successor to Hitler, but as the Second World War progressed, his standing with the Nazi leader diminished, and he was arrested and convicted at the Nuremberg trials in 1946. “That’s what’s great about this job,” Cox said of playing the despicable historical figure. “You hold the mirror up to nature, like the man says. Even the bad ones are human.
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