Adrien Brody
Appearances
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
Yes, it's a remarkable thing to find something that speaks to a struggle, a resiliency and a sense of something so intimate like my mother's journey of fleeing Hungary and my grandparents and having to leave everything behind and Those hardships that not only speak to me personally, but to so many from many different backgrounds.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
And I just was in awe when I read the script and feeling how right I was for this role.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
Well, those stories are very intimate to me. You know, there's a very interesting parallel with... The character that I play, Laszlo Toth, who is a Hungarian architect who really finds purpose and how his work, even how the works of architects of that era were really informed by the traumas of post-war times. of that time and how that influenced the architecture to come.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
And I feel like my mother as an artist and her beautiful sensitivity and empathy for others, all of that is enhanced from her own struggles and her own consciousness of the struggles of others. But she shared so much along the years with me, both stories of my grandparents and Her having to say goodbye to her friends without... She was only told she was having to flee the day before they left.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
How old was she? She was 13. And she had to say goodbye to her best friend and went to her house. And her friend said, okay, well, I'll see you later. And my mother didn't quite have a response and said hopefully or something along those lines where she knew what was coming but wasn't able to tell her friend.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
So those kind of moments are, those are big ones in our lives.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
Yeah, it was also, she's done remarkably well, and she's a real incredible artist. Sylvia Plahi, I don't know if we've referenced her, but she is a... I'll meet people quite often in New York who say, oh, yeah, yeah, I know who you are, but your mom, she's the artist. And she's done such great, great things and has devoted her life to that.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
But the struggles for my grandfather, I think, were more... um, pronounced primarily with, uh, his, he had a very strong accent, not dissimilar to my characters. Um, I think it's, it's hard to be, uh, an outsider, you know, it's hard to be a foreigner, even though you attempt to assimilate and, and to fit in. And, um, that's very much a part of Laszlo's journey. And I got to
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
honor that struggle of his and and also the dialect and specific sounds and uh rhythm that that he had and personality traits that i was able to reflect upon were really quite wonderful to to give a layer of truth to this character you had to learn hungarian is that right Yes, I mean, I knew all the curse words from my childhood.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
I definitely knew them, and there are some in the film that were not scripted that I've added, so that was an added benefit. But even the English is such a specific sound and dialect that it was very important to me that it rang true. We worked with a wonderful dialect coach, and we found men of the 50s, of that era, of...
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
When my grandfather had arrived and there was a similar formality that was necessary and I found some clues that were really very helpful to keying into that.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
I did, I did. He passed when I was quite young, but I loved him. My parents often see how similar I am to him and how he was to me. They point that out. They always kept him very close, yes.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
Well, he had a lot of similar aspirations. I mean, he wanted to be an actor at one point, too. But he was...
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
passionate and emotional person which i i am and um when did you find out he wanted to be an actor um only later i guess i you know i had started acting at quite a young age but he had already passed and um we often would say how proud he would have been to see me along the way i mean it would be such a a gift to be able to share this with my grandparents i think it would just blow their mind um
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
has kind of given purpose to their sacrifice. And it's something that's not lost on me, that my own good fortune and the firm footing that I've been given through their hardships along the way is definitely something I honor daily. So to do this film, I feel really, it's quite wonderful.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
I had visited and actually we shot... Hungary is, and Budapest is a... film location destination. Part of the reasoning was that there are film labs there and Brady was using film and it's better than shipping it across borders from other locations that may have been, you know, less able to process all the dailies regularly. But also, you know, Yeah, there was a look and a feel.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
It was definitely helpful for me to be there. Also, our wonderful crew are all Hungarians, and I had a responsibility to sound good, not only to live up to their expectations, but to interact and hear them constantly was very, very helpful in keeping me grounded and tonally feeling connected to that era.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
I think my first professional job was 12 years old. Before acting, I started doing magic and I was, you could call it a professional job. I mean, I think I earned $50 to do a children's birthday party in its entirety. But I loved magic and I've
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
I found that the storytelling that's involved in addition to creating the illusion was a gateway into an understanding of performance and precision in performance. But I found a love for acting at a very, very young age and then was fortunate to work pretty consistently over the years. I didn't have a big career for many years, but I
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
I was a working actor, and I have always been very grateful for that.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
Yeah, I just joked about it last night. I said, you know, acting beats working for a living. And it is very hard work in all seriousness, but it is such a joy and it's always different. And I always had a very curious spirit and that curiosity of my childhood lives on in me. And, you know, I grew up in New York City. I grew up in Queens. I took the train all the time.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
I had to take four trains each way to go to drama school. I got accepted to performing arts as a public school. But it gave me a wonderful foundation.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
Yes. I mean, it's not merely a public school, but it was a... It's a remarkable school, but it was a public high school, meaning I was, by being selected and making it into the drama department, I was given four acting classes a day within the public school system, which is remarkable and was very helpful for me. But along the way to get to school, I'd have to take the train.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
And I learned so much about character along those lines.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
That train ride and this diverse city and, you know, some of those discoveries in those years informed choices I made even in the pianist years later of, you know, witnessing characteristics and... Watching people. You name it. Yes. Watching people.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
I was doing theater. I'd first done some work with Elizabeth Suedos at BAM, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and I'd gotten an off-Broadway play in the Lower East Side. take the train in from after junior high school and go to work and try not to get jumped in the East Village. And then, you know, go to work each day. And, you know, I loved it. I really, I really loved it. And at five,
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
Just turning 14, I'd booked the lead role in a public television film. So I went off to Nebraska and shot a movie. Do you still have that movie? Oh yeah, you could probably find it. It's called Home at Last. I'm quite my boy in it. It was wonderful. And that too, it spoke to... A time in history, it was I played an orphan in the 1800s.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
And at the time, many orphan children were being adopted and shipped off to the Midwest by families on farms and They were given a home and education and religion, but they were also, you know, cheap labor and they were put to work. And it spoke to that struggle and that time in history.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
And so even at a very young age, I was gravitating towards and being selected for roles that spoke to things that were of some relevance. And I'm really happy about that.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
You know, my parents are a unit, you know, they've always stood together and embrace of me and in nurturing me and my my individuality and not suppressing my individuality and my rambunctious nature as a child and my enthusiasm and curiosity of the world. And they've only enhanced that. And my mother's work has been so influential on me as an artist.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
First of all, in me encountering acting is the result of her having an assignment to photograph the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, which preceded my education in performing arts, where I started as a very young boy because she had seen an acting class. They had acting classes for children that were, she saw in me what all these kids were doing and she had that intuition.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
So even just encountering it came as a result of her photographic work. But then I'm also the son, only son of a photographer. So I am very much a focal point in front of the lens that came from an artist's eye. And I also witnessed her imagery and her immortalization of my city and the world through that very beautiful specific lens since birth.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
And whereas I grew up with film everywhere in my home, negatives being hung from the showers and film canisters in the tub and the smell of fixative in the dark room smelling like home and my mother and film test prints on record racks all strewn around the floor in front of the landing in front of my bedroom. And so since I could crawl, I was seeing imagery everywhere and beautiful imagery.
Fresh Air
Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody
Tanya, thank you very much. I enjoyed this conversation.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
Is it the test? No, it is not. Nothing is of its own explanation. Is there a better description of a cube than that of its construction? There was a war on. And yet, it is my understanding that Many of the sites of my projects had survived. They remain there, still in the city. when the terrible recollections of what happened in Europe cease to humiliate us.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
I expect for them to serve instead as a political stimulus, sparking the upheavals that so frequently occur in the cycles of peoplehood.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
Depends what you mean by that. But yes, he slept in the same bed together. But I worked with it very – I had to learn how to be very close to it.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
You know, I only do what I feel is necessary to find a closeness and a sense of truth so that I can, you know, quote, act less, you know, and feel honest in an interpretation. I can't. portray a man who's starving if I don't understand hunger. I can't portray the physical shift of a man who's starved by not losing that weight. I can't understand classical music without knowing to play it.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
You name it. And fortunately, a lot of that work that I had done in an effort to honor Spielman and the pianist and really to honor one man's journey that represented the loss of six million and spoke to such a horrific time in our history gave me a great deal of insight and understanding in what Laszlo's past experiences were that he is just on the precipice of overcoming as he
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
arrives to the United States. And so while this movie is a vastly different story and a story about an immigrant's journey and it is also the journey of someone who's endured that and it's quite remarkable how that has lived with me and given me greater insight years later in a role like this.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
Well, they both reference this time that has changed the shape and face of this world indelibly. And they both reference how intolerance and oppression and anti-Semitism and forces that are ugly exist and have deprived us of so much beauty in this world. This movie, The Brutalist, is a fictional story.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
And the reason it's a fictional story is because when Brady and Mona were doing their research to try and write a film about a European architect who survived the Nazi occupation and carried on his work in America. there were none to be found because they'd all been killed.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
And then Brady and Mona had to find references of other wonderful creatives who were similar, like Marcel Brauer, who has left a wonderful legacy of work, you know.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
As an architect, but left in the mid-30s, fortunately. And so I think the films obviously speak to this horrific time and speak to the power of art and the beauty and the capacity for the human spirit to endure and the power of the ability to create. beauty and lightness amidst darkness and to find purpose in art to transcend that darkness.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
And you don't have the words, you don't have the vocabulary or confidence to speak in another language. I can understand a fair amount of French, but I'm very reticent to start speaking, especially when I'm in France, because I'm just not confident with that. And the pressure of coming to a new land and trying to communicate and express yourself in a way is very hard for many people.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
But yeah, I see what you're saying. A lot of the silence that exists or does not exist in a film is also up to the filmmaker and the editor. And the beauty of this film, and you can correct me if you feel differently, but in spite of its length, it does not feel long.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
And the beauty of its length is that you are afforded moments that feel very real and personal because you can sit with the characters and experience those moments and they aren't truncated in an effort to keep a scene lively and edgy for the sake of pace. And that takes a very confident and brave filmmaker
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
And one who understands the nuance of language and storytelling and trusts in his actors and gives them the space and honors those magical moments that can be created.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
I think my first professional job was 12 years old. You know, before acting, I started doing magic and I was, you could call it a professional job. I mean, I think I earned $50 to do a children's birthday party in its entirety. But I loved magic and I found that that
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
the storytelling that's involved in addition to creating the illusion was a gateway into an understanding of performance and precision in
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
in uh in performance and and um but i i found a love for acting at a very very young age and then was fortunate to work pretty consistently over the years i didn't have a big career for many years but i i was a working actor and i'm i have always been very grateful for that
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
Yeah, I just joked about it last night. I said, you know, acting beats working for a living. And, you know... It is very hard work in all seriousness, but it is such a joy and it's always different. And I always had a very curious spirit and that curiosity of my childhood lives on in me. And, you know, I grew up in New York City. I grew up in Queens. I took the train all the time.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
I had to take four trains each way to go to drama school. I got accepted to performing arts. It was a public school, but it gave me a wonderful foundation.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
I mean, it's not merely a public school, but it was a... It's a remarkable school, but it was a public high school, meaning I was, by being selected and making it into the drama department, I was given four acting classes a day within the public school system, which is remarkable and was very helpful for me. But along the way to get to school, I'd have to take the train.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
And I learned so much about character of, you know, witnessing characteristics and... Watching people. You name it.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
I was doing theater. I'd first done some work with Elizabeth Suedos at BAM, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and I'd gotten an off-Broadway play in the Lower East Side. take the train in from after junior high school and go to work and try not to get jumped in the East Village and then, you know, go to work each day. And, you know, I loved it. I really, I really loved it.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
Just turning 14, I had booked the lead role in a public television film, so I went off to Nebraska and shot a movie.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
It's a lovely, lovely question. And, you know, my parents are a unit. They've always stood together in embrace of me and in nurturing me. me and my individuality and not suppressing my individuality and my rambunctious nature as a child and my enthusiasm and curiosity of the world. And they've only enhanced that. And my mother's, Work has been so influential on me as an artist and my...
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
First of all, in me encountering acting is the result of her having an assignment to photograph the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, which preceded my education in performing arts, where I started as a very young boy, because she had seen an acting class, they had acting classes for children that were, she saw in me what all these kids were doing, and she had that intuition.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
So even just encountering it came as a result of her photographic work. But then I'm also the only son of a photographer. So I am very much a focal point in front of the lens that came from an artist's eye. And I also witnessed her imagery and her... Her immortalization of my city and the world through that very beautiful specific lens since birth.
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
And whereas I grew up with film everywhere in my home, negatives being hung from the showers and film canisters in the tub and the smell of...
Fresh Air
Jeremy Strong / Sebastian Stan / Adrien Brody
fixative in the dark room smelling like home and my mother and and film uh test prints on record racks all strewn around the floor in front of the landing in front of my my bedroom and so since i could crawl i was seeing imagery everywhere and beautiful imagery and i think that made art and its accessibility very tangible and available.
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You know, I owe so much to my mother and my grandparents for their sacrifice. And although I do not know fully how to express all of the challenges that you have faced and experienced and the many people who have struggled immigrating to this country, I hope that this work stands to lift you up a bit and to give you a voice. And I'm so grateful. I will cherish this moment forever. Thank you.