Adrien Brody got PTSD after starvation diet for ‘The Pianist’
Adrien Brody says he has PTSD from working on the 2002 Holocaust drama “The Pianist,” owing to the dramatic weight loss he undertook for the film.
The star, who won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Holocaust survivor Władysław Szpilman in the Roman Polanski movie, spoke about the experience making the biographical pic during a new interview with New York Magazine.
Brody, 51, said he went on a near-starvation diet so he could lose 30 pounds for the role. When it finally came time to step onto set for the first time, the strict regimen left him weighing only 129 pounds.
The star “was barely drinking water by the time they started filming,” according to the profile.
“That was a physical transformation that was necessary for storytelling,” Brody said, looking back. “But then that kind of opened me up, spiritually, to a depth of understanding of emptiness and hunger in a way that I didn’t know, ever.”
Asked if he has PTSD from making the film, the actor replied, “I do, yeah.”
“I definitely had an eating disorder for at least a year,” he shared. “And then I was depressed for a year, if not a lifetime. I’m kidding, I’m kidding.”
Brody has gone to extreme lengths acting in other films throughout his career.
Filming 2005’s “The Jacket,” a science-fiction thriller that follows a Gulf war veteran who’s wrongly sent to a mental institution, he told director John Maybury to leave him in a straitjacket his character wears so he could “get a feel for it,” per New York Magazine.
The outlet also reported that Brody was left with a permanent dent in his nose after someone punched him and broke his nose while filming “Summer of Sam.”
And in the movie “Oxygen,” the actor opted to wear actual metal braces rather than prosthetic ones to play a serial killer with braces.
“I didn’t know how fucking painful that was until they stuck in pliers and ripped them off my teeth at the end,” Brody explained.
He also ate ants and worms during the making of “Wrecked,” since his character in the film wakes up alone in the forest.
The youngest person to ever take home the Best Actor Oscar (he was just 29 when he won for “The Pianist), Brody is in the running for the coveted trophy again this year.
His performance in Brady Corbet’s film “The Brutalist” — about a Hungarian-born Jewish architect who survives the Holocaust and emigrates to the US — has earned him the New York Film Critics Circle’s Best Actor award.
The movie is now playing in select theaters.
