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Adrien Brody (born April 14, 1973) is an American actor. He received widespread recognition when he was cast as the lead in Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002). The role won him an Academy Award for Best Actor, the youngest actor ever to win the award, and a César Award for Best Actor, the only American actor to win one. 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 Jewish and his mother was born in Budapest, Hungary to a Catholic father and Jewish mother. As a child, Brody performed magic shows at children's birthday parties as "The Amazing Adrien". Brody attended 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. 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. An avid daredevil, he has broken his nose three times doing off-the-wall stunts. His nose was also broken once again during the filming of Summer of Sam. Almost from his debut performance as an orphan from New York City who finds a new life in Nebraska in the PBS period drama "Home at Last" (1988), Adrien Brody has garnered critical kudos and made audiences sit up and take notice. The lanky, angular-featured, dark-haired actor seemed to be poised on the verge of stardom after landing the coveted role of Corporal Fife, the authorial stand-in in Terrence Malick's highly-anticipated filming of James Jones' World War II novel "The Thin Red Line" (1998). Unfortunately, his part was edited down to little more than a cameo, an insult only compounded by the amount of advance press his starring role had received. Still, the young actor persevered, and made a name for himself with subsequent portrayals that showcased his talent and classically compelling screen presence. Born and raised in New York City, Brody began acting at camp as a child but first found some notoriety as the subject of photographs taken by his mother, famed photographer Sylvia Plachy. He often credits Plachy for his acting career as her commission to shoot at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts led to Brody's enrollment in the school's young people's weekend program, where he quickly found his calling. After making his professional acting debut in the off-Broadway play "Family Pride in the '50s", Brody acted in a handful of small film roles and played Mary Tyler Moore's stepson in the short-lived sitcom "Annie Maguire" (CBS, 1988) before hitting his stride as a delinquent who serves as a role model for a boy left alone by circumstance in "King of the Hill" (1993). Reviewers fell over themselves praising his lead performance as a gambler who gets in too deep in Eric Bross' "Nothing to Lose" when it premiered at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival. A tussle over the title led a delay in its release: now called "Ten Benny", it played theatrically in 1998. By that time, the busy actor had played Mickey Rourke's junkie brother in "Bullet" (1995), a computer whiz in "Solo" (1996) and a homosexual poet patterned after Allen Ginsberg in the independent "The Last Time I Committed Suicide" (also 1996). Reuniting with Bross, Brody received additional acclaim as an bartender/playwright in the midst of interracial romance, falling for Elise Neal after losing Lauryn Hill in "Restaurant" (1998). 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, 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 the youngest actor ever to win the award. He also won a César Award for his performance, becoming the only American actor to win one. 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 after winning 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 has appeared in four very different movies. 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 a Box-Office success; it grossed 550,316,795 worldwide and is Brody's most successful movie to date. He also played a detective in Hollywoodland. He has also appeared in Diet Coke commercials and Tori Amos' music video for "A Sorta Fairytale". After copping the disappointingly minor role in "The Thin Red Line", the actor recouped and confirmed his rising star status when Spike Lee tapped him to play a thoughtful and complex punk rocker suspected around the neighborhood of being the serial killer Son of Sam in the director's 1999 effort "Summer of Sam.” Brody also offered a display of his versatility with a remarkably unsettling turn as a murderous psychopath who buries alive a kidnap victim in the thriller "Oxygen" (aired on Cinemax in 1999 prior to a limited big-screen run). He next gave a fine starring performance as a young Jewish man who falls for an alluring Catholic girl (Carolyn Murphy) in Barry Levinson's semi-autobiographical "Liberty Heights,” a drama set amid social unrest in mid-50s Baltimore. The busy actor then had leading roles in Kenneth Loach's "Bread and Roses,” a fact-based chronicle of labor union struggles in California, and the war-torn Yugoslavia-set drama "Harrison's Flowers" (both lensed 1999). Brody was next seen as a European count opposite Hilary Swank in "The Affair of the Necklace" (2001) before appearing in the film that would provide him with a breakthrough role, director Roman Polanski's "The Pianist" (2002). As a brilliant pianist and Polish Jew who bears witness to Nazi atrocities (thanks to his musical talents) and desperately attempts to escape, Brody astounded audiences with the depth of his sensitive, melancholy performance and earned a wealth of critical plaudits as well as a leading role Oscar, catapulting him from mainstream obscurity into the upper echelons of actors. Brody's small role in "The Singing Detective" (2003) was filmed pre-Oscar, so his next real post-win film was in writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's tension-filler thriller "The Village" (2003), playing Noah the village idiot, essentially, among a 19th Century-style community isolated from the outside world and subject to a pact with mysterious creatures living in the surrounding woods. Brody next starred in the thriller "The Jacket" (2005) as an amnesiac man convicted of murder and institutionalized who is straight-jacketed and shoved in a morgue drawer, where he sees a vision of the future that prompts him to free himself with the help of a woman he has yet to meet (Keira Knightley). Brody next starred in the celebrity biopic-cum-crime noir, “Hollywoodland” (2006), playing Louis Simo, a private investigator who digs into the tawdry life and mysterious death of “Superman” actor George Reeves. The more Simo learns about Reeves’ complicated life, the more he learns about himself and his connection to the events. Meanwhile, Brody signed on another biopic, “Manolete” (lensed 2006), a look at the famed matador from 1940’s Spain and his love affair with actress Lupe Sino (Penelope Cruz). He also began filming the unusual biopic, “I’m Not There: Suppositions on a Film Concerning Dylan” (lensed 2006), a re-enactment of the life of Bob Dylan with multiple actors embodying different stages of the singer’s life. 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 has been confirmed to star as a con man in Rian Johnson's The Brothers Bloom, which is slated for a 2008 release date. Brody will also star in Splice, a science fiction film directed by Vincenzo Natali and is slated for a 2009 release. Brody is currently filming Cadillac Records, directed by Darnell Martin, which is slated for a 2008 release. |
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