Adrien Brody won an Oscar aged just 29 for his performance in 2002’s The Pianist, making him the youngest recipient of the best actor award for his depiction of a Polish-Jewish musician living in Nazi-occupied Warsaw.

But the iconic film wouldn’t mark his last portrait of World War Two. This week, he scooped a Golden Globe, taking home best actor for his portrayal of a Hungarian Jewish architect who survived the Holocaust by emigrating to America in The Brutalist.

Brody dedicated his speech to his ancestral heritage, particularly his mother and grandparents who emigrated from Hungary to America during the 1956 revolution, and his father, as the “foundation” of his family.

But what are Brody’s Jewish roots, and how have they shaped his art?

Who is Adrien Brody?

Brody was born in 1973 in Queens, New York City. As a child he loved magic and performed under the stage name “Amazing Adrien” at birthday parties.

He attended the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, where he had applied to study fine art but later switched to drama.

An actor from the age of 13, Brody went on to garner praise for his performances on the silver screen, from Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line (1998) and Spike Lee's Summer of Sam (1999) to Steven Soderbergh’s King of the Hill (1993).

Then came his titular role in The Pianist.

The film was the darling of the 2003 Academy Awards, landing best director, best adapted screenplay, and best actor for Brody’s one-of-a-kind performance of the musical Holocaust survivor.

Since then, the actor has starred in several Wes Anderson classics, including Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), portrayed Salvador Dalí in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris (2011) and American playwright Arthur Miller in Andrew Dominik's Blonde (2022).

Brody isn’t just a regular on the big screen. He also played an Italian American mobster in Peaky Blinders and joined the cast of Succession in 2021 as a billionaire investor.

Any Jewish roles to date?

Brody’s portrayal of pianist Władysław Szpilman surviving Nazi persecution a Warsaw Ghetto is no doubt his most notable Jewish role.

The film, based on Szpilman’s memoir, follows the radio station pianist as he is separated from his family, who perish in a Nazi death camp.

But Szpilman survives the war by hiding in the ruined city of Warsaw, playing a key role in the city’s resistance movement.

In his preparation for the role, Brody took method-acting to the extreme: he studied piano for months, lost 30 lbs, moved out of his New York apartment he shared with his then-girlfriend, put his car up for sale and isolated himself from loved ones.

He fell into a year-long depression after the role and returned to New York just weeks before the 9/11 attacks.

The theme of antisemitism is revisited in Brody’s later depiction of investor Josh Aaronson in Succession, during which a character compares him to Shakespeare’s Shylock.

Aaronson’s Jewishness is clearly indicated to the audience — he has a mezuzah outside his home — and he is attacked by tycoon Logan Roy, who tells Aaronson to “count all your gold in your castle” and makes an antisemitic gibe about his consumption of coffee and bagels.

Succession does not shy away from the anti-Jewish nature of the comments, with Logan’s son, Kendall, subsequently chastising his father for spouting “antisemitic f***ing bagel and gold bullshit”.

Family

Brody is the son of Sylvia Plachy, a renowned Hungarian-American photographer, and Elliot Brody, a retired history teacher and self-taught painter.

Both his parents are Jewish, but his mother was brought up Roman Catholic, and Brody said an interview with the Washington Post that he was raised without a strong connection to either religion.

Plachy, born in 1943 in Budapest, is the daughter of a Czech Jewish mother and a Hungarian Roman Catholic father of aristocratic descent.

They married on the eve of World War Two. Plachy’s mother hid her Jewish identity to escape Nazi persecution, leading her daughter to be brought up Catholic.

Plachy’s maternal grandparents were deported along with her aunt from their village in Czechoslovakia to Auschwitz. The aunt was the only survivor.

Two years after the Soviet regime’s violent clampdown of the Hungarian Revolution, Plachy’s family moved to New York in 1956.

Meanwhile, Brody’s father is the descendant of Polish Jews.

In an interview, Brody shared that his father’s background informed how he approached his performance in The Pianist.

“I remember saying to my father, who is a history teacher, that young Americans are extremely fortunate not to have experienced war on their soil, because the repercussions of World War II are still very visible in Warsaw,” he told the LA Times.

“Then the World Trade Centre was attacked. I went down there with my mom, who is a photojournalist and took pictures. The emotions I felt — the sadness, anger and the fear from this destructive inhumanity — were very similar to what I’d been experiencing playing Szpilman.”

Brody’s long-term partner, English fashion designer Georgina Chapman, described him as “a kid from Queens who really embraced the culture of the streets” when speaking to Vogue journalist Wendell Steavenson. “Yet he also carries a very European elegance, which gives this wonderful complexity.”

The Brutalist

If its three wins at the Golden Globes are anything to go by, The Brutalist, directed by Brady Corbet, is a major Oscar contender.

Set to be released in UK cinemas on January 24, the film follows innovatory Hungarian Jewish architect László Toth, who flees Europe in 1947 for America and struggles to re-create his life.

Brody speaks much of his dialogue in Hungarian and Yiddish.

It picked up best actor, best director, and best film in the actor category at the star-studded awards night, where Brody shared with the audience his inspiration behind the performance.

“The character’s journey is very reminiscent of my mother’s and my ancestors’ journey of fleeing war and coming to this great country. I owe so much to my mother and my grandparents for their sacrifice,” he said on stage.

The speech was notable for its absence of any explicit mention of Jews or the Holocaust — a fact criticised out by journalist Eve Barlow in a searing Substack.

“I have never seen someone give a speech so painfully while fearing every word that was about to escape his lips in the event it wasn’t carefully chosen enough,” she wrote.

“The word ‘war’ escaped. The word ‘immigrant’. But never the word Jew or Holocaust. Brody was so desperate not to offend anyone with the words that have become taboo in the Hollywood that apparently the Jews run. It is now taboo to say Holocaust in Hollywood.”

But post-awards, Brody shared with journalists his musings on what it’s like acting amid a climate of rising antisemitism since October 7.

“Unfortunately, there is a tremendous amount of antisemitism. It’s intimate to me, the roles that I’ve played, and it makes me feel very grateful to be a part of storytelling that speaks to this,” he said.

In a conversation with Entertainment Weekly, Brody highlighted the parallels between his character — a Hungarian Jew forced to flee his homeland and prove himself as an architect in America — and his mother, forced to flee Hungary during the Soviet Union before making a name for herself as a visionary photographer in New York. By playing Toth, Brody said he was following in his mother’s footsteps.

Speaking to USA Today, he shared that nothing feels fictional about the film, even though it is a fictional story.

“It’s inside me; it’s deeply rooted in truth. Just last night, my mum sent me a whole slew of images: some from The Pianist, some from my grandfather, some with my father holding me as a boy. It’s all there: all the lives that I’ve lived and chapters in my life.

“It instantly tapped into my mother and grandparents’ struggle of coming to America. Even in spite of assimilating and becoming Americans, you’re still a foreigner.”