Succession: The Best Film Performance From Each Main Cast Member

HBO’s Succession is a triumph within the drama genre, thanks in large to the talented cast. What other movie projects have they succeeded in?

You Are Reading :Succession The Best Film Performance From Each Main Cast Member

As arguably HBO’s proudest content of the prestige drama variety they’ve had to offer in the wake of Game of Thrones’ conclusion, Succession similarly wields a dense ensemble consisting of second-to-none talent across the board.

Allow the below-listed entries to serve as examples of the show’s main cast members demonstrating their acting chops on the silver screen. Most of the performances were for films that predate Succession. Thusly reiterating why they were each the perfect choice for the role they play and will continue to as season 3 nears.

10 Peter Friedman: Safe

Known to Succession fans as Logan’s on-again/off-again lawyer Frank, the character actor has made his likeness known across many popular TV shows and movies over the years.

But when indie cinema boomed in the early to mid-’90s, so did the opportunity for an underappreciated and affordable bit player like Friedman to deliver a strong main villain performance opposite Julianne Moore in the psychological horror, Safe (1995). Friedman plays a conniving “self-help guru” who drains the wallet of Moore’s character before she knows what hit her.

9 J. Smith Cameron: Margaret

The infamously-delayed epic drama saw director Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea) team-up with many frequent collaborators of his like Matt Damon, Mark Ruffalo, and future Succession screen-sharers Kieran Culkin and his (Longeran’s) wife, J. Smith Cameron.

Cameron shined bright as the theatre actress mother to Anna Paquin’s lead character in the film that’s extended cut was deemed a “masterpiece” by its producer, Martin Scorsese – who, along with editor Thelma Schoonmaker, delivered their own (but ultimately rejected) final cut of the movie.

8 Matthew Macfadyen: Frost/Nixon

While a few others contend, like his protagonist turn in the British comedy, Death at a Funeral (2007), or his brief but memorable effort as the head of a film production company’s HR department in The Assistant (2019), Macfadyen’s supporting role in Frost/Nixon (2008) narrowly wins out.

In Ron Howard’s Oscar-nominated film, Macfadyen – who plays the married-into-the-family Tom Wambsgans in Succession – plays a different Tom. Producer Tom Birt, who had talk show host David Frost’s ear and respect while their team frantically prepared to interview a disgraced Richard Nixon post-Watergate scandal.

7 Nicholas Braun: Red State

Before slyly working his way up the ladder as a seemingly harmless but actually-strategizing goofball in Succession, “Cousin Greg” found himself even more in over his head than he does often times within the series.

The towering actor lent his early talents to Kevin Smith’s first non-comedy – the religiously-charged 2011 thriller Red State – where he played a teenager held captive by an extremist church that had a member lure him and his friends thereby offering an invitation for sex online.

6 Sarah Snook: Predestination

Though crushing her small roles in solid time-jumping films like Steve Jobs and An American Pickle, Snook’s performance in this low-budgeted time travel movie helped her showcase the scene-stealing capabilities she’d later flaunt on a regular basis as Succession’s Shiv Roy.

Snook stars alongside Ethan Hawke in Predestination as a multi-faceted, intersex fiction writer denied the chance to head to outer space once upon a time because of her condition, then later forced by a mysterious government agency to undergo gender reassignment.

5 Hiam Abbass: I Still Hide To Smoke

Within this little-seen film currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video, the Palestinian actress with notable supporting roles in films like Blade Runner 2049 and The Visitor blossomed in a rare lead capacity.

Most known as wife to Logan Roy and step-mother to the Roy siblings in Succession, I Still Hide to Smoke calls for Abbass to headline as a masseuse working in a Hammam in Algiers. For her character, a day in the life at her job consists of witnessing terrorist attacks from a distance and providing shelter to those in trouble – like a pregnant teenager on the run.

4 Jeremy Strong: The Trial Of The Chicago 7

The versatile actor who headlines Succession as the wound-up, concealed-for-fear-of-explosion wannabee heir to the throne let it all explode in stoner-rific fashion when playing Jerry Rubin in Aaron Sorkin’s latest.

In spite of inhibiting a personality that’s the complete opposite of the constantly-crushed-by-his-dad Kendall Roy, both Rubin and the Succession Season 2 finale mic-dropping reign-ender would agree that their weakness is when they are ensorcelled. It means to be enchanted.

3 Alan Ruck: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Here’s where Cameron goes berserk. As the best friend to Matthew Broderick’s titular lead character, Ruck delivered a performance that demanded similar iconic classification.

His visceral existence within the narrative could never be as easily dismissed as, say, Connor Roy’s presidential campaign. Unless of course, Connor finds a way to tab Bueller to be his vice. Then it’s all over for everyone.

2 Brian Cox: Manhunter

For fans who failed to realize Anthony Hopkins was not the first actor to take on the menacing forensic psychiatrist-turned-serial killer first made popular in Thomas Harris’ interrelated series of 1980s crime novels.

Five years before The Silence of the Lambs forever changed the game, Succession’s Golden Globe-winning Brian Cox played Dr. Hannibal Lectre (spelt Lecktor when he played the role) for director Michael Mann’s Manhunter.

1 Kieran Culkin: Igby Goes Down

With a pair of Golden Globe nominations as the disturbed but sharp-witted Roman Roy, Kieran Culkin has reached his current career peak. Though audiences should not for a minute believe Succession is what’s helped him surpass the talents of his older brother who was famously home alone for a pair of aptly-named ’90s movies.

That came in 2002 when a teenage Kieran received his first Golden Globe nomination for Igby Goes Down (2002), the film that announced there was a new, sardonically-equipped Culkin in town – and he was here to stay.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/succession-cast-best-movie-performances/