Adrien Brody revealed he developed an eating disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after his extreme weight loss for his Oscar-winning role in “The Pianist.”
“I definitely had an eating disorder for at least a year,” he told Vulture in an interview published on Tuesday. “And then I was depressed for a year, if not a lifetime. I’m kidding, I’m kidding.”
In addition to the eating disorder, he detailed suffering from insomnia and panic attacks long after filming wrapped on the 2003 Roman Polanski film, in which Brody portrays Polish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman who survived the Holocaust.
In preparation for the role, the actor, who was 29 at the time, sold his car and removed other comforts like his apartment and phone from his life. He placed his other personal belongings in storage.
The “King Kong” star also began a rigorous diet for the movie, allowing himself to eat only small amounts of protein while he practiced classical piano. He lost 30 pounds as a result, and his weight dropped to 129. He and his then-girlfriend at the time also called it quits at the time.
By the time he began filming some months later, Brody was “barely drinking water.”
“That was a physical transformation that was necessary for storytelling,” the actor, now 51, shared. “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.”
After the film’s premiere, Brody went on a year-long hiatus from acting, which his father, Elliott Brody, said was involuntary.
“He had just won the Oscar, but he wasn’t getting anything that was commensurate to what he had just done. So he turned down a lot of crappy roles,” Elliott said.
Adrien has been known to practice similar severe methods while prepping for some of his significant roles.
For the 2005 sci-fi thriller, “The Jacket,” in which his character is sent to a mental institution, Brody reportedly told the director to put him in a straitjacket “so he could get a feel for it,” per the outlet.
Additionally, for his role in “Oxygen,” he got metal braces for his character instead of prosthetics.
“I didn’t know how f–king painful that was until they stuck in pliers and ripped them off my teeth at the end,” Brody recalled.
