Adrien Brody puts down his phone. “I’m heartbroken,” he says. The latest of many friends in Los Angeles has just lost their home to the city wildfires. The actor, 51, hasn’t had a place in LA for some years, he says. Still. “It’s horrible. Unfathomable.” The mood is sombre, but he is also at work. He sits in the corner of a London hotel room, legs crossed in a chic black coat. A publicist hovers in the en-suite bathroom.
Brody is here to spread word about The Brutalist, the epic drama in which his star performance is likely to secure the best actor Oscar. It would be his second. He remains the youngest man to ever win the prize, having done so in 2003 for Roman Polanski’s The Pianist. An awards campaign is now under way, a process not much less fraught than a run for political office.
