Adrien Brody plays an amnesiac Gulf War veteran in psychological drama the Jacket
Adrien Brody certainly doesn't want to get typecast. Since winning the best actor Oscar for The Pianist he has played everything from the slow-witted Noah Percy in M Night Shyamalan's The Village through to dashing lead in Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong, currently in post-production.
I caught up with him for a round table interview just after his sci-fi thriller The Jacket had premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and he was keen to explain that as long as a film engages him, he'll probably take the role, whether it's a small independent feature, or a multimillion pound blockbuster.
"I don't know anyone who would not take the opportunity to accept a leading man role with Peter Jackson at the helm on Universal's biggest movie to date," he says, smiling.
"There's no decision in that. When I made it, I didn't have a script at the time. In all fairness, this may be one of the biggest movies that they make but it's run like an independent film. Peter and his team are pretty much autonomous, incredibly creative and detail-oriented."
"The characters are very telling and I think it will be the definitive King Kong, so I'm incredibly honoured to be part of it. I've always wanted to have access to roles like that in a big studio movie. There is no actor that says I don't want to work in studio films... they don't have opportunities for good roles and there are a pool of actors that are 'used' because of where they are in there career. Brody says that he has passed on many opportunities to do studio films "because the film didn't inspire me at all."
"I wasn't starving, so I didn't need to do that and put myself in a position where I really needed it. Hopefully there will be a nice balance where I can do the creative independent films, yet find really interesting roles in the larger studio films. I'm having a lot of fun doing this movie (King Kong). I'm having the chance to be a much more action-oriented character, which is very physically challenging, but exciting. And there's a love story, which I have always yearned to be involved with. And there is a sense of humour and intelligence to my character, Jack Driscoll. He's a playwright and screenwriter who gets sent on a mission and ultimately goes to save the woman of his dreams."
Scary method
Brody certainly seems to be up for any physical challenges that are thrown at him. He shed around 14kg for the part of Wladyslaw Szpilman in The Pianist and his preparation for The Jacket, which was released on DVD last week, was no less taxing.
He plays Jack Starks, a war veteran who finds himself locked up in a mental institution. The head doctor (Kris Kristofferson) has some fairly shady ideas concerning his patients, one of which is to pump them full of drugs, strap them in a straitjacket and bung them in a morgue drawer for hours on end. So, with all that claustrophobic acting, didn't he go a little bit crazy?
"A little," he admits. "But I encourage the sense of that, because you need to, you have a responsibility to connect with emotions and understand them. And I spent a lot of time in isolation tanks to get a sense of that 'other' claustrophobia.
"There's a very heightened mental awareness because you're being deprived of your sense of gravity and sound and you're in a body temperature solution. So you start drifting elsewhere, naturally. I did it for hours at a time. Normally they do 15 minute, or half hour sessions.
"You have to cultivate the feelings that your character is feeling. I'm not normally predisposed to claustrophobia but confined in a full body restraint, left on a steel gurney and thrown into a morgue drawer for hours and hours on end, trying to 'lose it' it was exciting."
How's this for size?
It's movies such as this, argues Brody, that are enjoying a golden age, as larger studios finally begin taking an interest in independent film. But he suggests it's an uneasy relationship.
"I think that the nature of the business has changed a lot. Many of the bigger studios have realised that smaller divisions can be successful with less risk involved. That's kind of a good thing because there will be more films being made that have appeal to less broad an audience with the kind of characters that I play in The Jacket.
"This is an independent movie, but it does have the kind of distribution backing of a studio, so it's an interesting phenomenon."
