Which actor sacrificed everything for a role and was right to do so?

1,400 actors audition in London for the first role in Roman Polanski’s film The Pianist in 2001.

But none of them catch the director’s attention.

Polanski wants Joseph Fiennes for the lead role.

The latter, however, declined the proposal, preferring, at the time, to focus on theater.

The casting director in charge of the film then offered it to a young, almost unknown 27-year-old actor, whose only fame was his participation in Terrance Malick’s La Ligne Rouge (where he was originally going to play the lead role before Malick changed his mind and cut almost all of his scenes…).

After several auditions, however, Polanski was impressed with Brody ‘s talent and offered him the role.

The Pianist is the true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman , a Polish-Jewish composer, thrown into the horrors of World War II.

To prepare for filming, Adrien Brody decides to dedicate himself entirely to the role.

A follower of Stanislavski ‘s ” method ” , he sacrifices everything to get into the skin of his character.

As his character has lost his home, his family, and everything that constituted his daily life, Brody is stripped of all the comforts he once enjoyed, as well as all of his social connections.

“I moved out of my apartment, sold my car, turned off my phones and left,” Adrien Brody told the BBC in 2013.

All I took with me were two backpacks with a few things and my piano keyboard to practice on.”

To isolate himself from the world, the actor goes so far as to leave the woman he has been living with for years…

He then left for Europe, where he spent weeks wandering the Polish countryside.

Playing the role of a great pianist, he also trains several hours a day to play the piano, particularly the Chopin pieces he will perform in the film.

The last sacrifice Brody will make for the film will be to lose 17 kilos to film the scenes that take place in the Warsaw ghetto, while his character is starving.

“There’s an emptiness associated with hunger that I’ve never experienced,” Brody said.

I needed to know that for this role. I knew pain, the loss of a loved one, the sadness of life, but I had never known the despair that hunger brings.”

The actor being relatively thin by nature, losing 17 kilos in such a short time will cause him to experience intense fatigue.

At the end of his extreme diet, he weighs just 62 kilos and is constantly lacking energy .

“It was a very difficult time. I had nothing comforting in my life anymore. No more food, no loved ones to talk to.

I constantly read the memoirs of Wladyslaw Szpilman, my character. I was deeply depressed by the horrors he had gone through.”

The actor’s investment in the role pays off. The Pianist is a superb film and Brody’s performance is remarkable. He will also receive the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance.

But all the sacrifices Adrien Brody makes will come at a cost.

“During filming, I sometimes feared I had gone too far. I started to worry that I wouldn’t be able to get out of this character when it was over. I wondered if I would lose my sanity there.”

By his own admission, it will take him six months to return to normal life after filming ends…

Was it all worth it?

According to Adrien Brody, yes .