Brian Cox is currently winning raves for his work in Succession but with over 200 credits to his name, odds are good you've seen lots of his other work. Brian Cox started his acting career in the late 1960s and would appear in assorted TV shows, including Z Cars, Hammer House Of Horror and Minder. One of his first major movie roles of note was 1986's Manhunter, playing the first screen incarnation of Hannibal Lector - though the movie renamed hin Lecktor. Cox's subduced, icy performance won him great reviews and is in start contrast to Anthony Hopkins' more broad take in The Silence Of The Lambs.
Following Manhunter, further movie and TV show appearances followed, including Ken Loach's political thriller Hidden Agenda, TV movies Sharpe's Eagle and Sharpe's Rifles starring Sean Bean and an episode of Inspector Morse. Cox is an acclaimed Shakespeare actor too and has tread the boards with Titus Andronicus and King Lear, among many other plays. His movie career started to rev up in the late 1990s thanks to supporting roles in Rob Roy, Braveheart, and The Glimmer Man. He appeared alongside Daniel Day-Lewis in dark drama The Boxer and had a key role in Wes Anderson's Rushmore in 1999.
Brian Cox is an actor who likes to jump around and is equally at home in comedies, low-budget dramas, and blockbusters. The early 2000s alone highlight this, where he went from a lead role in disturbing thriller L.I.E. to a guest role as Daphne's father in Frasier, a supporting appearance in horror remake The Ring and a part in cult comedy Super Troopers. Cox was rarely out of work during this period, co-starring in the first two Bourne Identity movies, X2 and Adaptation. He played the lead villain of 2004's Troy and voiced the odious snuff movie director in video game Manhunt.
The late 2000s brought more notable projects, including Wes Craven's Red Eye, horror anthology Trick R' Treat - where he based the look of his character off director John Carpenter - and had a guest role on HBO's acclaimed Deadwood. In 2011 he joined the cast of well-reviewed reboot Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes and he featured in both RED movies with Bruce Willis; in 2008 he played the main character in another thriller called Red.
Brian Cox has worked pretty much non-stop in the years that followed, in projects such as Pixels, miniseries War & Peace, and spine-tingling horror The Autopsy Of Jane Doe. In 2018 he returned for Super Troopers 2 and in 2019 starred in Good Omens alongside David Tennant and Michael Sheen. Since 2018 he's played a lead role in HBO drama Succession as Logan Roy, the tough owner of a media conglomerate who is suffering from ill-health. The show has been showered in critical praise since it began and is a good reminder of Brian Cox's peerless talent.