Brian Cox is on a publicity tour, and he's brought a flamethrower. Fresh off telling Jeremy Strong to stop method acting (and then revealing Strong begged him to stop talking about it), the Succession star is now taking aim at Johnny Depp, calling him "so overblown, so overrated" in an interview with The Times.

According to Cox, he turned down the role of Governor Weatherby Swann in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise because he didn't want to work alongside Depp. That's not just passing on a paycheck - those films made billions. But Cox, now 78, apparently values his artistic integrity more than residuals from Disney tentpoles.

Is he wrong, though? That's the uncomfortable question Cox's comments raise. Depp was once a genuinely adventurous actor, the guy who worked with Tim Burton, Jim Jarmusch, and Terry Gilliam. He took risks. He played weirdos. He was interesting.

Then Captain Jack Sparrow happened, and Depp spent the next two decades reprising variations on the same swishy, eyeliner-heavy shtick. The performance was brilliant in The Curse of the Black Pearl - genuinely inventive and surprising. By the fifth film, it was exhausting. Depp became a parody of himself, a walking Hot Topic display that couldn't find the off switch.

The recent legal battles and public controversies haven't helped his image, either. Whatever your take on the saga, it's hard to argue 's career is in a healthy place. His last few films - , - barely registered. His persona, once roguishly charming, now feels like a relic of a different era.