Brian Cox slams Joaquin Phoenix’s terrible ‘Napoleon’ acting

Movies

By Samantha Ibrahim

Brian Cox didn’t mince words when he bashed Joaquin Phoenix’s acting performance in the 2023 historical drama “Napoleon.”

“It’s terrible,” the “Succession” star, 77, said at London’s HistFest earlier this week. “A truly terrible performance by Joaquin Phoenix.”

The English actor continued: “It really is appalling. I don’t know what he was thinking. I think it’s totally his fault and I don’t think [director] Ridley Scott helps him.

“I would have played it a lot better than Joaquin Phoenix, I tell you that. You can say it’s good drama. No — it’s lies. I think he’s well named. Joaquin … wackeen … wacky. It’s a sort of wacky performance,” he went on about the pronunciation of Phoenix’s name.

“Napoleon” starred Vanessa Kirby as the military commander’s lover and wife, Joséphine Bonaparte, and focused on the 19th century Frenchman’s rise to power.

Cox also reacted to Mel Gibson’s 1995 period drama “Braveheart,” taking a swipe at the historical aspect of it.

“ ’Braveheart’ is a load of nonsense,” the “X2” star said. “Mel Gibson was wonderful but it’s a load of lies. He never impregnated the French princess. It is a bollocks that film.”

Cox appeared in the film as Argyle Wallace.

Last February, Cox even dissed former “Succession” co-star Jeremy Strong’s method acting technique in an interview with Town & Country.

“He’s a very good actor. And the rest of the ensemble is all OK with this. But knowing a character and what the character does is only part of the skill set,” he said of Strong, 45, at the time.

“It’s f–king annoying,” Cox added of the “Selma” star always being in character. “Don’t get me going on it.”

Even more, Cox shaded Meghan Markle last year by noting that she “knew what she was getting into” when she married Prince Harry in 2018.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have since moved to California.

Cox said in a Haute Living New York interview that the “Suits” star, 42, had “the childhood dreams of marrying Prince Charming and all that s–t we see as fantasy that could be our lives in our dreams.

“You can’t go into a system where somebody’s already been trained to behave in a certain kind of way and then just expect them to cut themselves off,” he said.