French-Polish Director Roman Polanski is counted among the legendary filmmakers and has produced several masterpieces in his decades-spanning career. Adrien Brody collaborated with the director in the 2002 biographical war drama, The Pianist.
Based on the Polish-Jewish pianist and composer Władysław Szpilman’s 1946 Holocaust memoir of the same name, the movie stars Brody in the lead role. But filming the movie was not really easy on Brody and it took a grave toll on him.
Adrien Brody Was Terrified of Roman Polanski
Roman Polanski’s The Pianist is undoubtedly a masterpiece. The movie was also pretty close to the director. Being a Polish Jew himself the director made the movie with utmost care. At the age of seven, Polanski’s mother died in a concentration camp in Auschwitz, later, the young Polanski had to escape from the Nazi-occupied Polish city of Krakow. Perhaps, that’s why he was quite hard on the actors of the movie. “He wasn’t easy on me ever,” Adrien Brody said of the director (via CBS News). “He wasn’t particularly kind to me, but he wasn’t … he was never disrespectful regarding the work. I grew. I’m stronger, I’m tougher than Roman. I’m tougher, I’m not harder, I’m just tougher,” he added. Also, Brody fondly recalled the incident where Polanski humiliated the actor.
“We were shooting a scene and he’s like: ‘Adrien, I need you to climb up the building. And I want you to go up to the roof and I want you to climb out the window. And I want you to hang and they’re going to shoot at you. And I want you to slide off the building and hold on to the gutter and then you’re going to fall,'” And I said, ‘Has anyone tried this before?’ And he said, ‘Hollywood actors … Come on I show you, I show you.’ And he runs up the building, 68 years old, climbs out the window and hangs from the window, slides down the roof of the building, hangs from the gutter, jumps down to the ground, brushes himself off and he said, ‘There, somebody did it. Now do it.'”
Perhaps, being hard on the actors resulted in a fruitful production of the movie. The movie won three Oscars including Best Director and Best Actor.
Adrien Brody Was Depressed After The Pianist
Brody has suffered a great deal doing The Pianist. Playing Władysław Szpilman he “had to sacrifice large parts of my personal life,” Brody said (via IndiWire). Also, the preparation was intense as he had to starve intentionally to get into shape for the role. Even after the movie, he was mostly clueless about anything in life and spent most of his time on “friends’ couches trying to start a life again.”
“I was depressed for a year after ‘The Pianist. And I don’t suffer from that, generally. It wasn’t just a depression; it was a mourning. I was very disturbed by what I embraced [in making that film], and of the awareness that it opened up in me. But how much these things take from you changes project to project,” Brody said.
Brody, one of the most celebrated method actors, took his preparation for the Polanski film went too far. “I gave up my apartment, I sold my car, I disconnected the phones, and moved to Europe,” he told BBC News in 2003. Also, he broke up with his then-girlfriend and lost 30 pounds. It would certainly be insane for many but Brody pulled it off, he won an Oscar for his role for his role in the movie.
