Adrien Brody fought back tears on a visit to a London prison as he prepared to play a man wrongly convicted of murder.
The Oscar winner is playing real life former prisoner Nick Yarris - who spent more than two decades on death row for a crime he did not commit - in new play 'The Fear of 13' at London's Donmar Warehouse and Brody has admitted he got emotional when he toured the high security HM Prison Belmarsh to help him get into character.
He told the Guardian newspaper: "If everybody wasn’t staring at me, I could have just wept, because of how soul-robbing it is. You’re surrounded by all these people who have no opportunity and are all needing love and appreciation and have made some dumb mistake in their life and are being punished for that."
Brody revealed he had been wanting to get into theatre for a while and he opted to play Yarris on stage because the script "touched" him and he couldn't read it without bursting into tears.
The actor lived in a flat above the play's rehearsal room when he arrived in London to start work on the play and he admits it was far removed from the idea of Hollywood glamour.
He explained: "It was like a Spike Jonze movie. I do mostly independent films and it’s far from what people imagine the experience of a quote-unquote Hollywood actor. It’s just not anything to do with the perception of what it is. But theatre is even more! ...
"Theatre, you’re living in the attic and you’re working in the basement, and you don’t leave and nobody brings you lunch. You go out and you’ll get a sandwich at Tesco, and you munch it down and try to absorb all this material and try to represent so much.
"And you’re with 10 other people doing the same and it is quite wonderful. I found it to be very gratifying – somewhat frightening, but gratifying – to face that."
'The Fear of 13' runs at the Donmar Warehouse until November 30.
