Adrien Brody gave a once-in-a-lifetime performance with his portrayal of Holocaust survivor Władysław Szpilman in the 2002 biographical drama The Pianist. Directed by Roman Polanski, the movie gave Brody his first-ever Oscar. The audience will always remember the hollow eyes and pain of the character that Adrien played deftly.
Adrien Brody: The Youngest Winner of the Oscar for Best Actor 🎂 pic.twitter.com/LsupFBTfpZ
— Cinema Tweets (@CinemaTweets1) April 14, 2024
But this performance required Adrien to go to the lengths he had not experienced earlier. In a recent interview, the Oscar winner told the New York Magazine that this role needed him to lose an extreme weight of 30 pounds. He had to maintain a near-starvation diet to come to 129 pounds. Adrien said he had never experienced that kind of hunger and emptiness.
Understandably, the preparation for the movie and then the shooting itself took its toll on Brody’s health and mind. When asked if he suffers from PTSD after the filming, he answered,” “I do, yeah.” He explained how he battled an eating disorder, too. He jokingly added how he was depressed for at least a year if not a lifetime.
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Brody went on to tell how the physical transformation was needed for the movie, but it opened up the doors for spiritual depth for him. Brody has played some great characters on screen, but his work in The Pianist will always remain iconic.
Aside from Adrien Brody’s weight loss, a few more iconic transformations by Hollywood stars remain memorable. Matthew McConaughey lost 50 pounds in 5 months to have the AIDS-battling body of Ron Woodroofs for Dallas Club. Matthew also won an Oscar for his performance.
Christian Bale lost weight to bring his body down to 120 pounds while playing Trevor, an insomniac in the movie The Machinist, which became a cult classic.
Similarly, Natalie Portman lost 20 pounds for her role in The Black Swan and also learned to dance in a very short period while Charlize Theron underwent an extreme change for her role in Monster. Both actresses won their first Academy Awards for these performances.
Such extreme transformations, if not done under the careful supervision of professionals, can cause permanent damage not only to the body but also to the mind of the actor.
Adrien Brody wins the #GoldenGlobe for best performance by a male actor in a motion picture — drama. https://t.co/0212n8KLUy pic.twitter.com/1YgTjkbIEC
— Variety (@Variety) January 6, 2025
We are again witnessing one such great performance by Brody as he stars in The Brutalist, a film co-written and directed by Brady Corbet. He plays a Hungarian-Jewish architect, László Toth, who flees post-war Europe looking for a better life in America.
The performance has placed Brody among the top contenders for this year’s Academy Award. He has already snatched the Golden Globe trophy for Best Actor in A Drama Film for his work in the film, beating the likes of Timothée Chalamet, Colman Domingo, Daniel Craig, Sebastian Stan, and Ralph Fiennes.
