Adrien Brody won the Oscar for his intense role in The Pianist. Can he repeat the trick with Brady Corbet’s ambitious US epic The Brutalist?
Though some have since deemed it an inappropriate imposition, the impromptu kiss that Adrien Brody gave presenter Halle Berry after being named best actor at the 2003 Academy Awards must surely rank highly on any list of memorable Oscar moments. Twenty-one years on from that “surreal” episode, Brody remains the youngest recipient of a best actor Oscar: an award he won with his first nomination, three weeks in advance of his 30th birthday.
“It took a long time to process and set the bar quite high,” he says of a triumph that saw him beat four previous Oscar winners on the night. “But I have immense gratitude for being acknowledged, and it’s definitely had a major impact on my life and career.”
Brody, now 51, also won a César Award for his performance in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, in which he played a Polish Jew endeavouring to survive the Holocaust in the ruins of war-torn Warsaw. Awards consideration since then has tended to come for his television ventures, a 2015 Primetime Emmy Award nomination for his title role in the History Channel’s Houdini being followed by another in 2022 for his guest appearance in HBO’s Succession.
Leading film roles – such as his heroic turn in Peter Jackson’s 2005 King Kong – have not been wanting. More often than not, though, the New York-born actor has been found providing colourful support in films like 2022’s Blonde and See How They Run and the comedies of Wes Anderson.
“I have no problem doing a small project if it’s deeply moving and meaningful, and the director and the creative ensemble speaks to me,” Brody tells Screen International in November during the final week of his run playing a man wrongfully convicted of murder in The Fear Of 13 at London’s Donmar Warehouse theatre. “I am drawn to work that is inspiring, and there are no ground rules.”
It was this spirit of adventure that allied him to writer/director Brady Corbet when the latter approached Brody with The Brutalist, an epic portrait of a Hungary-born architect transplanted to post-Second World War America, which has thrust the actor back into the awards conversation.
“When he presented the script five years ago, I was blown away by the material,” says Brody of an actor-turned-director whose first two features – 2015’s The Childhood Of A Leader and 2018’s Vox Lux – he had seen and enjoyed. “It had so much depth and such a beautifully written role for an actor, with a remarkable journey to go on.”
Yet it was a journey Brody would have to wait for, due to Corbet’s opus initially setting sail with another cast onboard. “Not everything can come your way,” says Brody of seeing the role of Laszlo Toth – a Jewish-Hungarian architect recruited by a wealthy businessman to construct an edifice in Pennsylvania in the Bauhaus-inspired Brutalist style – go in the first instance to actor Joel Edgerton.
“But this one felt particularly hard to let go, because I knew what Brady was striving for and was hoping to achieve. I knew how personal it was to him and that I had the right ammunition to tell this the way it needed to be told. I knew I was the right person – but you’re not in charge of your own casting decisions.”
Pandemic-related delays to the film’s production ultimately saw a fresh ensemble assembled, with Brody cast as Toth alongside Felicity Jones and Guy Pearce.
Giving voice
Shooting in Hungary, which doubles for rural Pennsylvania, proved helpful when it came to mastering Laszlo’s accent, which Brody describes as being “very specific and nuanced”.
“First of all, I had a responsibility to not sound foolish in front of my crew,” he admits with a chuckle. “But I also interacted with Hungarians all day and was able to receive a lot and stay in the zone. The good thing is that I know where the sweet spot is and when it feels truthful. What I did not want was to do something that was inauthentic and inaccurate.”
The fact Brody’s mother Sylvia Plachy, a celebrated photographer, was herself born in Budapest lent an additional resonance to Laszlo’s story, as did her family’s subsequent emigration to the US when she was a teenager. “Her experience of fleeing Hungary during the revolution in ’56 affected her deeply,” says Brody. “It’s very much a parallel with what Laszlo is experiencing.”
Over the course of The Brutalist, which Corbet co-wrote with his partner Mona Fastvold, Brody’s character realises that Pearce’s Harrison Lee Van Buren is not the benevolent patron he purports to be. The trials that ensue are yet more ordeals for “an artist picking up the pieces” at a time when “so many were robbed of their creative work”.
“It’s the story of a man emigrating to America in the hope of rebuilding and toiling through poverty, and the harsh reality of what that is compared to the myth of the American dream,” he says. “The beauty of being an actor is to find opportunities to represent struggles that are greater than your own.”
Brody shed 30lbs (14kg) to play The Pianist’s Wladyslaw Szpilman at his most emaciated and spent four hours practising the piano each day in order to play Chopin’s music convincingly on screen. In The Brutalist, though, the actor was able to evoke Toth’s fragile mental state without going to the same extremes.
“I was much younger then, and I felt such immense responsibility in telling that story with all the truth I could muster up, that I did everything I possibly could to essentially act less,” he remembers. “I can’t say I need less to find those truths, but I have tools that are much more innately accessible and a catalogue of emotional and physical experiences in my life that I can draw from.
“Going into this, I forewarned my girlfriend and my family this was going to be another beast on my shoulders, and it was going to be hard. But while I carried a lot of that, the circumstances were different.”
Having premiered at Venice Film Festival in all its two-act, 215-minute glory, The Brutalist has picked up seven Golden Globe nominations, and the New York Film Critics Circle awarded it best film and Brody best actor. A24 opened the film in the US on December 20, with Universal/Focus Features to follow in the UK on January 24.
While accolades are gratifying, its star thinks in the longer term. “We are all trying to leave behind work we are proud of, and I am very proud of this film,” says Brody. “There’s something indelible about film that’s much like architecture – it’s something you build together.”
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