Brian Cox Reveals The Hilarious Truth About Working With Brad Pitt

It's not every actor who will get real — like, real real — in interviews when asked about current or former cast-mates. This is why we get down on our knees and thank the lord every day for legendary actor Brian Cox, whose interviews along his book tour have been illuminating, to say the least. Cox has gotten candid about working with Jeremy Strong on "Succession," for instance, admitting to Deadline that "[Strong] does what he does and he does it brilliantly, but it's also exhausting. Particularly exhausting for him, but it's also exhausting for the rest of us from time to time." 

Now, he's even revealing some fun stories about movies he did 20 years ago. Specifically, what it was like to film the movie "Troy" with Brad Pitt in 2004. In case you're unfamiliar or you've just forgotten, "Troy" is a movie theoretically based on Homer's "The Iliad," but in actuality is more like a three-hour love letter to the chiseled perfection of Pitt's shirtless torso. This is a fact that was clearly not lost on Cox, who played the fierce Agamemnon in the movie. Here's what he said.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Brian Cox reflected on some of his most iconic roles, from "Braveheart" to "Rushmore" to "Super Troopers," but we were really most amused by his reflections on the movie "Troy," where Cox apparently found Brad Pitt as distractingly hot as the rest of us did. "I remember at one point just kind of being agog at Brad 'cause, you know, he'd never been in costumes like that," he said, explaining that having worked on "great costume epics" before, he was used to seeing coworkers without pants, but not Pitt. "Brad walked on and my jaw was down because he was so stunningly beautiful." Cox added, "I mean, I'm straight, but I just thought, 'Wow! My God, this guy is stunning!' What chance does one have on the screen with this beautiful, beautiful man?" For Cox's sake, we're sorry to say that, at least in that movie, the answer is zero.

Cox also said in the Vanity Fair interview that the part in "Troy" was the only part that he actively pursued. Cox is enough of a professional not to let even the stunning beauty of Brad Pitt get in the way of a great performance, so we don't blame him for "Troy"'s less than glowing critical reception — it has an unimpressive 54 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.