Fans saw Adrien Brody take way too long to finish his Oscar speech on the stage after he won Best Actor for The Brutalist, but it was not the first time he cut the orchestra. Brody did the same when he won his first Oscar for The Pianist, and he even kissed Halle Berry unannounced when he received the award.
Brody’s performance in the World War II drama has been received positively, and he was the youngest actor to win the Oscar. He reportedly starved himself and gave up many of his possessions to get into the zone of pianist Władysław Szpilman. However, Joseph Fiennes was reportedly first considered for the role.
Adrien Brody would have lost his Oscar-winning performance had Joseph Fiennes accepted The Pianist
Despite two Oscars to his name, Adrien Brody is often not considered to be among his greatest contemporaries. At the age of 29, Brody won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his intense performance as the Polish-Jewish pianist Władysław Szpilman, whose memoir was adapted into The Pianist.
Brody’s acceptance speech is iconic for divisive reasons, as he not only unceremoniously kissed Halle Berry on the stage as she presented the award, but he also exceeded the time given for the speech, telling the orchestra to stop playing him out (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?) However, nothing takes away from his brilliant performance in the movie.
Adrien Brody almost lost out on the biggest opportunity of his life when director Roman Polanski reportedly offered the role to Joseph Fiennes. Fiennes had just been in Shakespeare in Love, playing the Bard, and received multiple offers. However, he rejected the part as he had committed to a play. He told The Guardian that there were no regrets.
I know that I might have only got Shakespeare in Love because someone else turned it down; it’s a very small marketplace. So it would feel weird to say, ‘Oh, yeah, I could have been there on Oscar night’, because the whole chemistry of the film is built around that particular actor. Who knows if it would have had the same effect with a different cast? It’s a mercurial world of alchemy.
Fiennes also reportedly rejected a five-movie contract from Miramax after his performance in the Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love, as he did not want to get into the trap of Hollywood. The Pianist reportedly saw 1,500 actors audition for the main role, but it ultimately went to Adrien Brody.
Adrien Brody starved himself to understand what his The Pianist protagonist went through during World War II
The Pianist is a harrowing World War II drama that depicts the plight of the Polish Jews during the holocaust as Adolf Hitler and the Nazis rounded up the Jews and tortured them. Based on the life of real-life Holocaust survivor Władysław Szpilman, the film chronicles his journey from being a prominent pianist to losing everything during the War.
Adrien Brody reportedly gave up all his possessions, like his cellphone, house, car, and public life, to prepare for the part. He also took intense training sessions to learn to play the piano. He also reportedly lost a lot of weight as he starved himself to understand hunger. He said to GQ,
You can’t act emaciated. You have to become emaciated. And that was a technical process that led to a discovery about the hollowness and emptiness that one feels when you are literally deprived of sufficient nutrition…I realized I’d never really been hungry, and it still breaks my heart, how many people are hungry in this f*cking world.
He revealed how he took hunger for granted and spoke about how easily people wasted food in restaurants while several people went to bed hungry. Adrien Brody competed with some of the greats that year, including Jack Nicholson, Nicolas Cage, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Michael Cain, but he still won.
The Pianist is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
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