Adrien Brody feels ‘lucky’ early role was ‘eviscerated’

Adrien Brody has spoken about how lucky he feels to have had an early role “eviscerated” so he could be more prepared to enjoy success later in life.

The 51-year-old American actor originally had a significant role in the 1998 Oscar-nominated war movie The Thin Red Line, also starring Sean Penn and George Clooney, but post-production, his part was reduced to around five minutes.

At this time, Brody had not yet had big parts in movies, and it was before he was cast in The Pianist, the Holocaust drama for which he won the best actor Academy Award in 2002 at the age of 29, becoming the youngest actor to win in that category.

“I was always kind of grateful that The Thin Red Line was such a harrowing experience for me, and full of personal loss,” Brody said as he became GQ Hype’s cover star.

“There was public embarrassment and potential career disaster affiliated with all of that – I didn’t know that the role had been eviscerated.

“Then I looked back and I thought, ‘How lucky I am that I averted acclaim and praise at that age’.”

He also said his Oscar win for Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, based on Polish composer Wladyslaw Szpilman’s biography about surviving the Warsaw Ghetto after being hidden, was “the spirit world’s way of saying, ‘We’re going to make it up to you’, for The Thin Red Line”.

He said his “understanding of life was vastly inadequate for all that I was exposed to” before reaching the age of 30.

Brody is believed to be about to take awards season by storm once again, having been tipped for an Oscar nod for The Brutalist, which sees him play a Hungarian architect attempting to build a life in the US after the Second World War.

For the part, he has already picked up a Golden Globe for best actor and has been nominated for best male actor in a leading role by the Screen Actors Guild Awards.

Brody, who was not originally set to take the starring role having lost the part to Australian actor Joel Edgerton, said that “the veil of celebrity that unfortunately comes with success” can prevent “clarity in seeing the artist”.

“To enter this phase of life where I am visible, to love people and to feel the love of strangers day in and day out, is like a spiritual passageway,” Brody also said.

“I am on the other side of the world and I’ll make someone’s day buying toilet paper.”

Brody, whose family is from a Polish Jewish and Hungarian background, is also known for the adventure film King Kong, as well as Wes Anderson comedies The Darjeeling Limited and The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Read the full feature online at GQ Hype here gq-magazine.co.uk/article/adrien-brody-hype-interview-2025.