Adrien Brody extracted from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License

Adrien Brody
Adrien Brody at the Cannes Film Festival
Born	April 14, 1973 (1973-04-14) (age 36) Woodhaven, Queens, New York, United States
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1988–present

Adrien Brody (born April 14, 1973) is an American actor. He received widespread recognition and subsequent acclaim after starring in Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002). He is notable as the youngest actor ever to receive an Academy Award for Best Actor and the only American actor ever to win a César Award.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Career 3 Personal life 4 Filmography 5 References 6 External links

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.¹ Brody's father is of Polish-Jewish descent, and Brody's mother was born in Budapest, Hungary to a Catholic father and Jewish mother.²³ As a child, Brody performed magic shows at children's birthday parties as "The Amazing Adrien".⁴ 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. He attended summer camp at Long Lake Camp for the Arts in the Adirondacks in upstate New York.

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, 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, 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.^{citation needed} 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. 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 million worldwide and is Brody's most successful movie to date in monetary terms. He also played a detective in Hollywoodland. He has also appeared in Diet Coke commercials and 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.⁵ He was also in talks with Paramount to play Spock in J. J. Abrams Star Trek XI, but it ultimately went to Zachary Quinto.⁶⁷ Brody also starred as a con man named "Bloom" in Rian Johnson's The Brothers Bloom, released in May 2009.⁸ Brody will star in Splice, a science fiction film directed by Vincenzo Natali that is slated for a 2009 release. He will also play the lead role of Royce in Predators (a reboot of the popular science fiction franchise) which will be directed by Nimrod Antal and produced by Robert Rodriguez.⁹

Personal life

In May 2009, Adrien Brody and Elsa Pataky ended their two-year relationship.

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
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	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
	Giallo	Inspector Enzo Lavia
	Fantastic Mr. Fox	Rickity	voice
2010	High School	Psycho Ed	post-production
	The Experiment	Travis	post-production
	Predators	Royce	filming

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Adrien Brody

External links

• Adrien Brody at the Internet Movie Database
• Adrien Brody at Allmovie

v • d • e Academy Award for Best Actor Denzel Washington (2001) · Adrien Brody (2002) · Sean Penn (2003) · Jamie Foxx (2004) · Philip Seymour Hoffman (2005) · Forest Whitaker (2006) · Daniel Day-Lewis (2007) · Sean Penn (2008) Complete List · (1928–1940) · (1941–1960) · (1961–1980) · (1981–2000) · (2001–present)

v • d • e César Award for Best Actor 1976: Philippe Noiret • 1977: Michel Galabru • 1978: Jean Rochefort • 1979: Michel Serrault • 1980: Claude Brasseur • 1981: Gérard Depardieu • 1982: Michel Serrault • 1983: Philippe Léotard • 1984: Coluche • 1985: Alain Delon • 1986: Christophe Lambert • 1987: Daniel Auteuil • 1988: Richard Bohringer • 1989: Jean-Paul Belmondo • 1990: Philippe Noiret • 1991: Gérard Depardieu • 1992: Jacques Dutronc • 1993: Claude Rich • 1994: Pierre Arditi • 1995: Gérard Lanvin • 1996: Michel Serrault • 1997: Philippe Torreton • 1998: André Dussollier • 1999: Jacques Villeret • 2000: Daniel Auteuil • 2001: Sergi López • 2002: Michel Bouquet • 2003: Adrien Brody • 2004: Omar Sharif • 2005: Mathieu Amalric • 2006: Michel Bouquet • 2007: François Cluzet • 2008: Mathieu Amalric • 2009: Vincent Cassel