BRIAN COX

Manhunter’s Hannibal Lecter, the Bourne movies’ Ward Abbott, X-Men 2’s William Stryker, and now, most terrifyingly, Succession’s sweary patriarch Logan Roy… Brian Cox has made a 60-year career out of playing authoritative bad guys. “It really goes back to my classical roots,” he tells Total Film.

- JAMIE GRAHAM

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.”