Adrien Brody

Biography

Adrien Nicholas Brody (born April 14, 1973) is an American actor. He received widespread recognition and acclaim for starring as Władysław Szpilman in Roman Polanski's 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.

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). He is a frequent collaborator of Wes Anderson's, having starred in five of Anderson's films, The Darjeeling Limited (2007), Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), The French Dispatch (2021), and Asteroid City (2023). He portrayed Salvador Dali in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris (2011), and Arthur Miller in Andrew Dominik's Blonde (2022)

He is also known for his roles on television including Luca Changretta in the fourth season of the BBC series Peaky Blinders, and Pat Riley in the first season of the HBO sports drama series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. He earned Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his roles as Harry Houdini in the History Channel miniseries Houdini (2014), and 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.[2] 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. 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. 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, broke up with his then-girlfriend, and learned how to play Chopin on the piano; at 6 ft 1 in (1.85 m) tall, he lost 30 pounds (14 kg), dropping him to 130 lb (59 kg). 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.

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.[16] Other TV appearances include NBC's The Today Show, and on MTV's Punk'd after being tricked by Ashton Kutcher.