Adrien Brody
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| Adrien Brody | |
|---|---|
 Brody at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival |
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| Born | April 14, 1973 Woodhaven, Queens, New York, United States |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1988–present |
Adrien Brody (born April 14, 1973) is an American actor and film producer. He received widespread recognition and subsequent acclaim after starring in Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002). He is the youngest actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, at 29 years old.
Early life
Brody was born in Woodhaven, Queens, New York, the son of Sylvia Plachy, a photojournalist, and Elliot Brody, a retired history professor and painter. Brody's father is of Polish-Jewish descent; Brody's Catholic mother was born in Budapest, Hungary, the daughter of a Catholic Hungarian aristocrat father and a Czech Jewish mother. As a child, Brody performed magic shows at children's birthday parties as "The Amazing Adrien". He attended the Joseph Pulitzer Middle School (I.S.145) and New York's Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts (famous as the inspiration for television's Fame). His parents enrolled him in acting classes to distance him from the dangerous kids with whom he associated. He attended summer camp at Long Lake Camp for the Arts in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. Brody attended New York's Queens College from 1991 to 1993, majoring in Performance Art, but returned to acting before graduation.
In 1992, Brody was seriously hurt in a motorcycle accident in which he flew over a car and crashed head-first into a crosswalk. He spent months recuperating. He has broken his nose three times doing stunts. His nose was broken once again during the filming of Summer of Sam.
Career
Taking acting classes as a youth, by age thirteen, he had done an off-Broadway play and a PBS-TV-movie. Brody hovered on the brink of stardom, receiving an Independent Spirit Award nomination for his role in the 1998 film Restaurant and later praise for his roles in Spike Lee's Summer of Sam and Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line. He received widespread recognition when he was cast as the lead in Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002). To prepare for the role, Brody withdrew for months, gave up his apartment and his car, was left by his then-girlfriend, learned how to play Chopin on the piano, and lost 29 lbs (13 kg). The role won him an Academy Award for Best Actor, making him, at 29, the youngest actor ever to win the award, and to date the only winner under the age of 30. He also won a César Award for his performance. Throughout his career, Brody has been compared to Al Pacino for his unique looks and method acting. He is also widely known for giving presenter Halle Berry a back-breaking kiss before accepting his Best Actor Oscar, and as the spokesman for fashion brand Ermenegildo Zegna.
Brody appeared on Saturday Night Live on May 10, 2003, his first TV work, but he was banned from the show after giving an improvised introduction while wearing faux dreadlocks for Jamaican reggae musical guest Sean Paul (the show's producer, Lorne Michaels, is notorious for hating unscripted performances). However, the unscripted intro remains in reruns of the episode. Other TV appearances include NBC's The Today Show and on MTV's Punk'd after being tricked by Ashton Kutcher.
After The Pianist Brody appeared in four very different movies. In Dummy (released in 2003 but originally shot in 2000, just prior to his work in The Pianist) he portrayed Steven Schoichet, a socially awkward aspiring ventriloquist in pursuit of a love interest (his employment counsellor). He learned ventriloquism and puppetry for the role (under the tutelage of actor/ventriloquist Alan Semok) convincingly enough to perform all of the voice stunts and puppet manipulation live on set in real time, with no subsequent post dubbing. He played Noah Percy, a mentally disabled young man, in the movie The Village, by M. Night Shyamalan, shell-shocked war veteran Jack Starks in The Jacket, writer Jack Driscoll in the 2005 King Kong remake, and father-to-be Peter Whitman in The Darjeeling Limited by Wes Anderson. King Kong was both critical and box office success; it grossed $550 million worldwide and is Brody's most successful movie to date in monetary terms. Additionally, Brody played a detective in Hollywoodland. He has also appeared in Diet Coke and Schweppes commercials as well as Tori Amos' music video for " A Sorta Fairytale".
On January 5, 2006, Brody confirmed speculation that he indeed was interested and very willing to play the role of The Joker in 2008's The Dark Knight. However, Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. eventually decided to cast Heath Ledger as The Joker. He was also in talks with Paramount to play Spock in J. J. Abrams Star Trek XI, but it ultimately went to Zachary Quinto. Brody starred with Mark Ruffalo in Rian Johnson's The Brothers Bloom as gentlemen con men released in May 2009. Also in 2009 was the box office release of Splice, a science fiction film written and directed by Vincenzo Natali. Originally a Sundance film, Splice was adopted by Dark Castle Entertainment and distributed by Warner Bros. Most recently, he played the star role of Royce in Predators (a sequel to the original Predator), directed by Nimród Antal and produced by Robert Rodriguez.
Filmography
| Year | Film | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1988 | Home at Last | Billy | |
| 1989 | New York Stories | Mel | |
| 1991 | The Boy Who Cried Bitch | Eddie | |
| 1993 | King of the Hill | Lester Silverstone | |
| 1994 | Angels in the Outfield | Danny Hemmerling | |
| Jailbreakers | Skinny | ||
| 1996 | Nothing to Lose | Ray Diglovanni | aka Ten Benny |
| Solo | Dr. Bill Stewart, Solo's Designer | ||
| Bullet | Ruby | ||
| 1997 | The Last Time I Committed Suicide | Ben | |
| Six Ways to Sunday | Arnie Finklestein | ||
| 1998 | The Thin Red Line | Cpl. Fife | |
| The Undertaker's Wedding | Mario Bellini | ||
| Restaurant | Chris Calloway | Nominated – Independent Spirit Award for Best Lead Male | |
| 1999 | Oxygen | Harry | |
| Liberty Heights | Van Kurtzman | ||
| Summer of Sam | Richie Tringale | ||
| 2000 | Bread and Roses | Sam Shapiro | |
| Harrison's Flowers | Kyle Morris | ||
| 2001 | The Affair of the Necklace | Count Nicolas De La Motte | |
| Love the Hard Way | Jack Grace | VFAA Award for Best Actor | |
| 2002 | Dummy | Steven | |
| The Pianist | Wladyslaw Szpilman | Academy Award for Best Actor Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor César Award for Best Actor National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor Nominated – BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role Nominated – Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor Nominated – European Film Award for Best Actor Nominated – Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama Nominated – Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Actor Nominated – Polish Academy Award for Best Actor Nominated – Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor Nominated – Vancouver Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor |
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| 2003 | The Singing Detective | First Hood | |
| 2004 | The Village | Noah Percy | |
| 2005 | The Jacket | Jack Starks | |
| King Kong | Jack Driscoll | ||
| 2006 | Hollywoodland | Louis Simo | |
| 2007 | The Tehuacan Project | Narrator | |
| Manolete (The Passion Within) | Manuel Rodríguez Sánchez "Manolete" | ||
| The Darjeeling Limited | Peter Whitman | ||
| 2008 | The Brothers Bloom | Bloom | |
| Cadillac Records | Leonard Chess | Black Reel Award for Best Ensemble Cast | |
| 2009 | Splice | Clive Nicoli | |
| Giallo | Inspector Enzo Lavia | Also Producer | |
| Fantastic Mr. Fox | Rickity | Voice Only | |
| 2010 | High School | Psycho Ed | post-production |
| The Experiment | Travis | ||
| Predators | Royce | ||
| 2011 | Midnight in Paris | TBA | post-production |
| Detachment | Henry Barthes | post-production Also Executive Producer |
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| Wrecked | Man | post-production Also Executive Producer |
