Adrien Brody

The image of Adrien Brody forcefully snogging Halle Berry shortly after she presented him with the Academy Award for Best Actor may not have aged terribly well, but it remains one of the most memorable Oscar moments of the early 00s, for better or worse.

As questionable as his behaviour might have been, Brody was justified in feeling jubilant. Up against Jack Nicholson, Daniel Day Lewis, Michael Caine and Nicholas Cage, he was by far the least known nominee in his category, and his victory had not been widely predicted. At 29 years old, he was also the youngest performer ever to win Best Actor.

For a while, Brody struggled to live up to the promise of that phenomenal victory. His next few roles included M Night Shyamalan’s The Village and John Maybury’s The Jacket, neither of which was particularly well received. He did co-star in Peter Jackson’s maximalist remake of King Kong, but the human performers in that film were all inevitably overshadowed by the monkey.

Box office stardom may not have materialised, but Brody eventually found further success as a regular player for Wes Anderson. To date he has appeared in five Anderson films – The Darjeeling Limited, The Fantastic Mr Fox, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The French Dispatch and Asteroid City.

Outside of Anderson, Brody’s CV generally features a lot of low to medium budget films made outside Hollywood, few of which made much of an impact. He had better luck on television, with a run on the popular British gang drama Peaky Blinders, and a memorable guest arc as a beanie-wearing billionaire on HBO’s Succession, for which he received an Emmy nomination.

In 2024, he was returned to mainstream prominence with his role in the critically acclaimed epic The Brutalist, which netted him a long awaited second Oscar nomination for Actor in a Leading Role.