American actor Adrien Brody managed to put himself in the spotlight of the world and earn a position in Hollywood due to his raw interpretation of a famous pianist who had to live through the Nazi siege during the Second World War.
His role as the Polish musician of Jewish origin Władysław Szpilman in the Holocaust not only earned him many awards and recognition in the world of cinema but also affected his physical and mental health.
Brody revealed in a recent interview with Variety that his role in the film 'The Pianist caused him to have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after having to undergo a strict starvation diet in order to give life to Władysław Szpilman.
The 51-year-old actor noted that he lost 14 kilograms and weighed, at that time, 58.5 kilograms, even drastically reducing his water consumption before having to film the strong scenes of the film.
“It was a physical transformation necessary to tell stories. But then that opened me, spiritually, to a deep understanding of emptiness and hunger in a way I had never known before.”he said.
The Hollywood star commented: “I definitely had an eating disorder for at least a year. And then I was depressed for a year, if not my whole life. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding.”
His performance in 'The Pianist' earned him his first Oscar at the age of 29, thus becoming the youngest artist to receive this important award.
In another interview with The Sunday Timesthe actor expressed that watching the film, released in 2002, still makes him cry and confessed that the most difficult thing about the entire process of making it was having to lose so much weight.
Brody commented that by losing so much weight “I got sick from it. It was cumulative. I went on a starvation diet and then had to gain the weight back.”
“My metabolism changed. I thought that I had experienced and lost, that my body would be different from now on.”he added.
It's not just the weight loss, but it also affected him to have to carry such a great responsibility as bringing to life a character with such a heartbreaking and raw story.
This was revealed in his statements with the media IndieWire, where he confessed that he had a lot of pressure on him “to portray a man whose lived experience represents the loss of six million people and the horrors of that time in history.”
