Adrien Brody wins second Oscar for ‘The Brutalist’

Adrien Brody on Sunday completed his return to the top of Hollywood’s A list, winning the second
best actor Oscar of his career for his searing portrayal of a Hungarian
architect who emigrates to America after World War II in “The Brutalist.”

Both of Brody’s Academy Awards have come for Holocaust-related films; he won
in 2003 for Roman Polanski’s “The Pianist,” becoming the youngest man ever to
triumph in the category at age 29.

This time, he bested Timothee Chalamet in Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete
Unknown,” Ralph Fiennes in papal thriller “Conclave,” Sebastian Stan as a
young Donald Trump in “The Apprentice” and Colman Domingo as a wrongfully
convicted inmate in “Sing Sing.”

“Acting is a very fragile profession. It looks very glamorous and at certain
moments, it is,” an emotional Brody told the audience.

“No matter where you are in your career, no matter what you’ve accomplished,
it can all go away. And I think what makes this night most special is the
awareness of that and the gratitude that I have to still do the work that I
love.”

Winning the golden Oscar statuette caps an extraordinary awards season for
the 51-year-old Brody, during which he captured nearly every major award for
his work as Holocaust survivor Laszlo Toth, a Bauhaus-trained Jewish
architect seeking a new life.

In “The Brutalist,” Toth arrives alone in New York and relocates to
Pennsylvania, where his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) lives. But that
arrangement is short-lived, as Toth doesn’t fit in with Attila’s new life
married to a Catholic woman.

As he tries to adjust to life in the United States, viewers see Toth
struggling to learn English as he battles the demons of his past and the
challenges of trying to work in an adopted homeland.

Everything changes when he meets industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren (Oscar
nominee Guy Pearce), who commissions him to build a monolithic memorial to
his mother — but also insists on controlling his designs.

His family life also morphs with the arrival of his wife Erzsebet (Oscar
nominee Felicity Jones) and his niece Zsofia (Raffey Cassidy).

“The Brutalist,” which runs for three and a half hours, earned 10 Oscar
nominations, including one for best picture and another for director Brady
Corbet.

“If the past can teach us anything, it’s a reminder to not let hate go
unchecked,” Brody said Sunday.

– Chameleon –

To put himself into Toth’s shoes, Brody drew inspiration from his own family
history.

Brody was born on April 14, 1973 to Sylvia Plachy, a photographer of
Hungarian descent, and professor Elliot Brody, who is Jewish with Polish
roots. Plachy moved from Budapest to New York in the 1950s.

“The character’s journey is very reminiscent of my mother’s and my ancestral
journey of fleeing the horrors of war and coming to this great country,”
Brody said as he accepted a Golden Globe award in January.

“I owe so much to my mother, my grandparents for their sacrifice.”

Brody started taking acting classes as a teenager, and attended both a
special arts summer camp and a prestigious high school for the arts in New
York.

After a series of small roles, his breakthrough came in Spike Lee’s 1970s
crime thriller “Summer of Sam” (1999).

Just a few years later, “The Pianist” hit cinemas — Brody took hours of
piano lessons to be able to do justice to the role of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a
real-life Polish Jewish musician who survived the Nazi occupation of Warsaw
during World War II.

His 2003 Oscar win was remembered for him planting a huge kiss on presenter
Halle Berry that became controversial when she later admitted it took her by
surprise.

Brody has said his work on “The Pianist” helped inform his portrayal of Toth
two decades later.

After “The Pianist,” Brody took on varied roles, from a youth with an
intellectual disability in M. Night Shyamalan’s horror flick “The Village” to
writer Jack Driscoll in the 2005 remake of “King Kong,” his biggest
commercial success.

He played Salvador Dali in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris,” featured in Wes
Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and “The French Dispatch,” and even had
a small role in the hit British television series “Peaky Blinders.”

He walked the catwalk for Prada, embraced humanitarian causes and even
starred in a music video for reggaeton singer Rauw Alejandro.

In his personal life, after a relationship with Spanish actress Elsa Pataky,
Brody has been dating fashion designer Georgina Chapman — the woman behind
the Marchesa label and the ex-wife of disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein —
since 2020. (BSS/AFP)