“Succession” star Brian Cox slammed Hollywood’s hiring practices during an interview on Radio Four.
The famous actor rejected the idea that real-life experience is a requirement for acting in a certain role. “Bollocks, absolute bollocks!” Cox said to Amol Rajan on BBC Two.
“It’s again, what I talked about earlier on, about interfering with the imagination,” he continued.
Rajan spoke of the criticism that surrounded actress Helen Mirren for portraying an Israeli prime minister in “Golda.”
“It kicked off a bit maybe a couple of years ago now when Helen Mirren played Golda Meir, the great Israeli leader, and people said, ‘Well Helen Mirren is not Jewish and therefore she can’t play a Jewish leader,'” Rajan said.
“And your argument is that actually the point of acting is that sometimes you’ve got to be something that you’re not, right?” he asked Cox.
“Exactly, we can inhabit roles,” Cox replied.
There has also been an ongoing Hollywood debate surrounding whether straight actors should portray gay characters.
Cox pushed back against the implementation of diversity quotas in Hollywood, arguing the casting process shouldn’t be contrived in such a manner. (RELATED: Arnold Schwarzenegger Has His Eyes Set On A Different Type Of Movie Role)
“I think we have to be free of all that,” Cox told Rajan. “I think we have to be diverse but that’s a different problem.”
“But I don’t think we have to say, ‘Oh we have to gear it in that way,’ because we are not telling the truth. We have to tell the truth,” he said.