Julian McMahon played handsome men you should not trust, and his trick was to let you see, a second at a time, what the good looks were covering. Nip/Tuck gave him seven years and, for two of them, the writing to match.
Fi1m perspective
Every consultation in Nip/Tuck begins with the same line, the surgeon asking the patient what they do not like about themselves. When Dylan Walsh's Sean asks it, he wants to know. When Julian McMahon's Christian Troy asks it, he is already working out the invoice. McMahon plays the question as a sales pitch, chin up, and it is the most honest thing about the character. Then, once or twice an episode and never for long, he looks across the office at his partner and lets you see what he would give to be trusted like that. That look is his whole method.
He began as a model, and the early parts treated him as one. Australian soaps came first, Home and Away (1990–91) among them, then America and Another World (1993–94). Profiler (1996–2000) gave him four seasons as John Grant, an FBI detective, and a first foothold in primetime. Charmed (2000–03) gave him the part that set the pattern: Cole Turner, half demon, the love interest the heroine ought to walk away from and cannot. He was dismissed early on as a pretty face and knew it. He has said he likes "the opportunity to play characters who have these dark sides but make the audience empathize with them", and on Charmed that was the job description.
Ryan Murphy's Nip/Tuck (2003–10) is where it paid off. Christian is a salesman in a surgeon's coat, all teeth and tailoring, who brings in the money and the women and treats both the same way, and the writing in the first two seasons is sharp enough to make him funny rather than merely awful. McMahon and Walsh are a proper double act, each envying the other, neither asked to play the villain. Then the series loses its nerve. From the third season it mistakes outrage for plot, and by the fifth we were bored for long stretches and then cross, because McMahon was still there, still good, and had been left with nothing to play. Watching him keep the swagger going through storylines the writers no longer seemed to believe in is the saddest thing in the show, and not in the way anyone intended.
The films did not do as much for him. He played Victor von Doom in Fantastic Four (2005) and its 2007 sequel, and most accounts say the scripts were not up to the actor; we have not reviewed them and will not judge them here. Television kept him. Runaways (2017–18) came and went, and FBI: Most Wanted (2019–22) gave him Jess LaCroix, the lead in a long-running procedural, the decent man after two decades of the other kind.
If you want to see what he could do, take the first two seasons of Nip/Tuck and stop there. Watch the consultations, and watch for the second when the smile goes out.
Biography
Julian McMahon was an Australian-American actor. Born in Sydney in 1968, he was the son of former Australian Prime Minister Sir William McMahon. He began his career in Australian television soaps including Home and Away before moving to the United States, where he appeared in the daytime drama Another World and the series Profiler.
McMahon gained prominence for his role as Cole Turner in Charmed (2000–2003) and as the plastic surgeon Dr Christian Troy in the FX series Nip/Tuck (2003–2010), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination. His film credits include Victor Von Doom in Fantastic Four (2005) and its 2007 sequel, as well as roles in RED (2010) and Premonition (2007). He later starred as Jess LaCroix in FBI: Most Wanted (2018–2022).
McMahon died in Clearwater, Florida, on 2 July 2025, aged 56.
