Adrien Brody Comes Full Circle

THE OSCAR WINNER, WHO’S ONCE AGAIN LEADING THE PACK THIS AWARDS SEASON, LOOKS BACK ON HOW HE’S NAVIGATED HOLLYWOOD AND FOUND HIS JOY

- JULIE JORDAN

It’s no surprise that Adrien Brody feels things deeply. In 2003, when his portrayal of a Holocaust survivor in The Pianist made the 29-year-old the youngest man ever to win the Best Actor Oscar, Brody acknowledged his joyful moment was also filled with sadness (the U.S. invasion of Iraq had just begun). On Jan. 5 Brody, now 51, found himself once again in the awards spotlight and “overwhelmed” when he took home his first Golden Globe for starring as a post-World War II refugee in the movie The Brutalist. Three days later he was moved to tears accepting the New York Film Critics Circle best actor award as devastating fires were spreading in L.A. Expressing immense gratitude for first responders, Brody admitted, “It’s hard to accept something like this when there’s so much suffering in the world.”

Finding a way to channel the complexities and raw emotions of life experiences has always been a key part of Brody’s skill set. For his 2005 thriller The Jacket, when his character went into a mental institution, Brody asked to be left in a straitjacket to better grasp the sensation. He ate worms and ants for his role in 2010’s Wrecked, in which he was alone in the forest. And for The Pianist, he sold his car and put everything he owned in storage before beginning a near-starvation diet to lose 30 lbs. “My experience and the way that I work typically requires a great deal of immersion,” he says.

The similarities between his two award-winning roles are not lost on the actor. In The Pianist, real-life musician Wladyslaw Szpilman lives through the horrors of war whereas