Brian Cox says Donald Trump is a ‘very good example of a villain’: ‘No empathy whatsoever’

Cox, best known for playing the media tycoon Logan Roy in the award-winning HBO series Succession, was talking about his recent reality gameshow 007: Road to a Million, in which he plays a James Bond-style villain character, when he said that Trump had all the right villain qualities.

“I think Donald Trump is a very good example of a villain, because he has no empathy whatsoever,” Cox told The Telegraph. “He’s clever and you cannot underestimate him, but I personally do not like the man.”

Cox, who lives between London and Brooklyn, New York, described Trump as “a force that is self-serving” and argued he is moving the US towards an oligarchy.

“In a country like that, someone who is so self-serving just creates an oligarchy, which is what he’s moving towards. That won’t work,” he said.

“It takes a while in America for the penny to drop – and the penny is dropping daily. More and more people are realising what is going on – because it’s the people who are going to be suffering, and he’s supposed to be standing up for them,” he said.

In May, Cox criticised Trump’s proposed plans for 100 per cent tariffs on non-US movies, saying it would be an “absolute disaster”.

Cox told Times Radio that Trump’s administration is “not really understanding the point of view of how films are made, and what films cost, [how] the cost of films [has] gone up and the cost of films in America went up considerably”.

“So it’s not quite right to say Hollywood’s being ignored, things have moved on, it’s become nationwide in America,” he added.

“It’s a kind of nonsense and a divine ignorance on all their parts.”

Following the results of the US presidential election in December 2024, Cox said that he would be trying to “spend as much time” in the UK.

Asked if the result has made him lose faith in people, he told The Guardian: “No, it doesn’t make me lose faith in people. It just makes me realise people are stupid. We’re in for a pretty rough old four years coming up.”