Adrien Brody

Adrien Nicholas Brody (born April 14, 1973) is an American actor.

After appearing in Bullet in 1996 with Tupac Shakur and Mickey Rourke, 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.

Brody has also starred in The Thin Red Line (1998), The Village (2004), King Kong (2005), Hollywoodland (2006), Cadillac Records (2008), Predators (2010) and See How They Run (2022).

One day, Roman Polanski watched Brody's performance in Harrison's Flowers (2000), and then Polanski decided to offer Brody the leading role of The Pianist (2002).

To prepare for the role, Brody withdrew for months, gave up his apartment and his car, broke up with his then-girlfriend, and took piano lessons for four hours a day until he could master passages from some of Chopin’s finest works.

At 6 ft tall, he lost 30 lb, dropping him to 130 lb. The role won him an Academy Award for Best Actor, making him, at age twenty-nine, the youngest actor ever to win the award, and, to date, the only winner under the age of thirty.

He also won a César Award for his performance.

He is known for his portrayal of Władysław Szpilman in Roman Polanski's war drama The Pianist (2002), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor at age 29, becoming the youngest actor to win in that category.

He also became the second American male actor to win the César Award for Best Actor for the same film.

He has starred in several other films and has received several other awards including nominations for a Golden Globe Award and a Primetime Emmy Award.

Brody appeared on Saturday Night Live on May 10, 2003, his first TV work.

During this appearance, he controversially gave an introduction for Jamaican reggae musical guest Sean Paul, while wearing faux dreadlocks and using a Jamaican accent.

It was reported at the time that he had improvised the bit, causing him to be banned from Saturday Night Live, however, it was later revealed it was part of the dress rehearsal too.

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 films.

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 film 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 a critical and box office success—it grossed $550 million worldwide, and is Brody's most successful film to date, financially.

He reprised his role voicing Driscoll in the video game adaptation of the film.

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 was interested in playing the role of The Joker in 2008's The Dark Knight, and also met with director Christopher Nolan.

However, Nolan and Warner Bros. decided instead to cast Heath Ledger in the role.

He was also in talks with Paramount to play Spock in J. J. Abrams' Star Trek, but it ultimately went to Zachary Quinto.

He has frequently collaborated with filmmaker Wes Anderson, appearing in his films The Darjeeling Limited (2007), Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), The French Dispatch (2021), and Asteroid City (2023).

In 2009, he starred in 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. In 2010, he played the star role of Royce in Predators (a sequel to the original Predator), directed by Nimród Antal and produced by Robert Rodriguez.

He portrayed Salvador Dali in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris (2011), and Arthur Miller in Andrew Dominik's Blonde (2022).

In 2011, Brody starred in a Stella Artois beer ad called "Crying Jean" that premiered right after half-time of Super Bowl XLV as part of Stella's "She Is a Thing of Beauty" campaign.

He earned Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his roles as Harry Houdini in the History Channel miniseries Houdini (2014), and investor Josh Aaronson in the HBO series Succession (2021).

Brody was born in Woodhaven, Queens, New York City, the son of Sylvia Plachy, a photographer, and Elliot Brody, a retired history professor and painter.

Brody's father is of Polish Jewish descent; Brody's mother, who was raised Catholic, was born in Budapest, Hungary, and is the daughter of a Catholic Hungarian aristocrat father and a Czech Jewish mother, although Brody says he was raised "without a strong connection" to either Judaism or Christianity.

As a child, Brody performed magic shows at children's birthday parties as "The Amazing Adrien".

He attended I.S. 145 Joseph Pulitzer Middle School and New York's Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.

His parents enrolled him in acting classes to distance him from the dangerous children with whom he associated.

He attended summer camp at Long Lake Camp for the Arts in the Adirondacks in upstate New York.

Brody attended Stony Brook University before transferring to Queens College for a semester.

Taking acting classes as a child, by age thirteen, he appeared in an Off-Broadway play and a PBS television film.

In television, he has played Luca Changretta in the fourth season of the BBC series Peaky Blinders (2017), and Pat Riley in the HBO sports drama series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty (2022–2023).