How Brit fashion designer brought troubled Hollywood star Adrien Brody back from the brink to the edge of Oscar glory
WHEN Adrien Brody became the youngest winner of a Best Actor Oscar at 29, one of Hollywood’s biggest stars should have been born.
But a series of controversies — including landing an unexpected snog on guest presenter Halle Berry as she handed him the 2003 gong for The Pianist — saw his career stall.
In fact around a decade ago it had become so hard to get the right role that the 51-year-old American — whose hit movies include The Grand Budapest Hotel and Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake — gave up acting to become a painter.
Now in a relationship with Harvey Weinstein’s ex-wife, British businesswoman Georgina Chapman, Adrien is the hot favourite to pick up his second Oscar, for three-and-a-half hour epic The Brutalist.
And he credits meeting 48-year-old fashion designer Georgina — a rising star whose fans include Jennifer Lopez and Kate Middleton — in 2019 for helping get him back on track.
Earlier this month, Adrien clinched a Golden Globe for The Brutalist, and said in his acceptance speech: “To my beautiful and amazing partner Georgina.
“Your generosity of spirit, your own resilience, your immense creativity, are a daily reminder of how to be.
“I would not be standing here before you if it wasn’t for you.
“There was a time not too long ago that I felt this may never be a moment afforded to me again, so thank you.”
It would have undoubtedly been an emotional moment, not only for Adrien, but also for Georgina, who was facing her own personal turmoil when they met.
Her world fell apart in October 2017 when her then-husband, movie producer Weinstein, 72, was accused of rape and sexual assault.
Georgina, who has two children by the Hollywood bigwig, announced she was divorcing him shortly after various allegations were made by more than 100 women.
It brought to an end their ten-year marriage.
She said at the time: “My heart breaks for all the women who have suffered tremendous pain because of these unforgivable actions.”
In The Brutalist, which opens in cinemas on Friday, Adrien plays a Holocaust survivor, just as he did in award-winning The Pianist.
This time, though, it is a fictional story and one which focuses more on the aftermath of World War Two.
It also didn’t require the immersive method acting of his previous, similar role, which left Adrien with PTSD.
The star has revealed that losing 30lb in weight and giving up everything — including living with his then girlfriend — for his incredible 2002 performance in The Pianist left him depressed.
He said: “There were physiological repercussions of that starvation diet that lingered and were very hard to contend with.
“I gave up my place to live. I wasn’t living with my girlfriend any more. I sold my car. Everything was in storage.
“I didn’t even have a phone number. I really went to a lot of extremes at that time.
“I definitely had an eating disorder for at least a year. And then I was depressed for a year.”
It could have been a case of too much, too soon for Adrien, when his Oscar win left him overwhelmed.
Bounding on stage at the awards bash, he grabbed Halle, gave her a dramatic and lingering kiss, then joked to her: “I bet they didn’t tell you that was in the gift bag.”
It raised a laugh at the time, but Adrien has since been criticised for not getting the actress’s consent.
Then, a couple of months later, a lack of judgment led him to wear a dreadlock wig on the US comedy show Saturday Night Live for his introduction of reggae star Sean Paul.
Adrien recently confessed that he “hadn’t been asked” back and that the show’s creator, Lorne Michaels, “wasn’t happy with me embellishing”.
In the same year, he struck up a friendship with the now-shamed music mogul P Diddy, making rap tapes for him and partying on his yacht.
None of that seemed to hurt his career at the time, because he grabbed the romantic lead role in £500million blockbuster King Kong.
If a director wanted an actor who would go all-in, Adrien was the man.
He dined on ants and worms while making Wrecked, learned ventriloquism for Dummy and joined a strike in preparation for Ken Loach’s Bread And Roses.
And off screen, he didn’t do things by halves either.
‘IT GAVE ME FULFILMENT’
When his then girlfriend Elsa Pataky turned 31 in 2007, he snubbed traditional romantic gifts such as jewellery and flowers to buy her a 19th-century New York farmhouse which he turned into a mock castle.
The actor told Hello! magazine: “I blindfolded her.
“Right at the castle, there’s a giant, beautiful church bell.
“And I said, ‘When you hear the sound of the bell, you can open your eyes and you’ll see your surprise’.”
Italian fashion legend Giorgio Armani helped with the design work, while Adrien did much of the renovations himself.
Two years later, though, the couple split and the Spanish actress is now married to Thor star Chris Hemsworth.
Despite being busy with acting, few of Adrien’s roles won critical acclaim, apart from Wes Anderson’s 2014 comedy The Grand Budapest Hotel.
In an interview with the latest edition of Vogue magazine, he says he paused his acting career shortly after that, adding: “To be honest, I wasn’t finding material that spoke to me.
“Painting re-emerged. It gave me fulfilment.”
Between 2017 and 2021, Adrien’s only acting job was as a Don Corleone-style Mafia boss in BBC hit Peaky Blinders, before he quietly slipped back off the radar.
But it was during this time that he met London-born Georgina, who appears to have helped get his film career back on track.
The talented actress and designer, who set up the fashion brand Marchesa in 2004, is a rising superstar in her own field.
‘METHOD ACTING’
Celebs from Helen Mirren to Rita Ora have showcased her dresses on the red carpet, while the Princess of Wales famously wore a dazzling pink gown by the brand for a state banquet with Spain’s royal family.
Following her divorce from Weinstein, Georgina has main custody of their son, 11, and teenage daughter.
And these days Adrien, who has never had children, is very much part of their lives.
They share a home in upstate New York, which comes with two donkeys, three horses, four cats and a dog.
And with a settled home life came a fresh break in Adrien’s career.
The Brutalist, which also stars British Rogue One actress Felicity Jones, was in many ways perfect for him.
It tells the tale of Jewish architect Laszlo Toth who flees persecution by the Nazis in his native Hungary. In the US, he discovers a land of opportunity but not necessarily of tolerance.
It reflected the experience of the family of Adrien’s maternal Jewish grandmother, who escaped the fascists’ clutches in Hungary during World War Two and headed for New York.
Adrien said of The Brutalist: “It’s unfortunately taken me decades to find something like this. It’s such an ambitious thing.
“But also, it instantly tapped into my mother’s and grandparents’ struggle of coming to America.
“Even in spite of assimilating and becoming Americans, you are still a foreigner.”
Adrien’s mother is award-winning photographer Sylvia Plachy, 81, and his father, Elliot Brody, is a retired history professor.
‘NEW LEASE OF LIFE’
Fortunately, his role in The Brutalist did not require Adrien to lose weight, as he did to play a starving ghetto survivor in The Pianist.
But he did have to learn Hungarian.
Felicity has said of the film: “We never left character when doing those scenes.
“We completely immersed ourselves in those moments, and for the duration we were filming, we really became those people.”
Method acting is not necessarily about staying in character.
It is more the idea of tapping into someone’s emotions — a technique that has so often left Adrien drained.
In recent years, the star appears to have found a new lease of life, stepping away from the Hollywood movie treadmill.
He delighted fans of HBO drama Succession with a brief 2021 cameo, playing a scheming billionaire.
And last year, he won five-star reviews for his “spellbinding” London stage debut in The Fear Of 13, appearing as an innocent man wrongly jailed for 22 years.
Perhaps that is why his popular Instagram profile is now full of gratitude and positivity, where he urges his 1.7million followers to “illuminate a path to unity and fulfilment”.
For the next six weeks, Adrien’s life will be a whirlwind of award bashes, as he is nominated for a Bafta to follow his Golden Globe. It all leads to the Oscars on March 2.
If his name is pulled from the golden winner’s envelope, it is sure to the highlight of the night.
Few Hollywood comebacks will be as emotional as this one.