“It was necessary for the story”: After starring in this masterpiece, Adrien Brody suffered from an eating disorder for more than a year.

Władysław Szpilman, a brilliant Polish Jewish pianist, escaped deportation. Forced to live in the heart of the Warsaw ghetto, he shares her suffering, humiliation and struggle. He manages to escape and take refuge in the ruins of the capital. A German officer will help him and allow him to survive…

After reading the above, you will surely recognize the synopsis of The Pianist, released in 2002 and signed by Roman Polanski.

By evoking the harrowing fate of Władysław Szpilman, a Polish Jewish pianist imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto, where he shared the suffering, humiliation and heroic struggles of World War II, the filmmaker banishes his painful past, that of a child who escaped from the ghetto. From Krakow, Poland.

Crowned with three Oscars, including Best Director, the Palme d’Or at Cannes goes to the extraordinary Adrien Brody, more transformed and inhabited than ever. The actor played the role of his life neither more nor less. At the cost of commitment and impressive loyalty.

“It opened me up to a deep understanding of emptiness and hunger”

He first lost 14 kg, then began to study the piano for months, practicing 4 hours a day. After that, he felt that he should lose himself as his character and isolate himself as much as possible.

He chose a radical solution: he gave up his apartment, turned off all his phones, sold his car and left for Europe as a road maintenance worker with only two bags…

During this preparation, “I missed everyone and everything good” he said Interview given to the BBC in January 2003. He was so isolated, as well as immersed in the memoirs of a Holocaust survivor pianist, that it took him six months to reacclimatize to “civilization.”

However, even far beyond the film, he wasn’t done paying the price. In a recent interview Vulture To promote his movie Brutalist, the actor talks about the painful period after shooting.

“It was a physical transformation that was essential to the narrative.” he says. “But then it kind of opened me up to a deep understanding of spiritual emptiness and hunger in a way I never knew.”.

add: “I had an eating disorder for at least a year” After the movie is over. Saying that his Oscar for Best Actor was well deserved.