Fresh Air - Adrien Brody Was Made For 'The Brutalist'

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

Adrien Brody won a Golden Globe for his role in The Brutalist, as a Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor who seeks a fresh start in post-WWII America. "I just was in awe when I read the script," he says. Brody spoke with Tonya Mosley about how his family's history helped him with the role, and about his collaboration with Wes Anderson. Also, John Powers reviews the new erotic drama Babygirl.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. In a stunning new film, my guest Adrian Brody plays a Hungarian refugee who escapes post-war Europe and arrives in the U.S. with dreams of rebuilding his life. The Brutalist is a multi-layered story that runs 3 hours and 35 minutes long, with a 15-minute intermission. And for me, the time flew by. Directed by Brady Corbett, the film explores the harsh realities of the American dream. And it's visually stunning, shot on a format known as VistaVision. It's what Alfred Hitchcock used to film North by Northwest in Vertigo. Brody portrays a fictional character named Laszlo Toth, who settles in Pennsylvania in 1947, where he meets a

wealthy industrialist, played by Guy Pearce, who recognizes his talent and hires him to create a community center in honor of his mother. However, the relationship between the two comes at a cost. The sweeping nature of the brutalist is reminiscent of Brody's work in The Pianist, where he captivated audiences and the Academy in 2002 with his stirring performance as a Jewish pianist from Warsaw who survived the Holocaust by hiding from the Nazis. Adrian Brody has been in a slew of films and television shows. His breakout role was in Spike Lee's 1999 film Summer of Sam. In 2002, at 29, he became the youngest person to win an Academy Award for Best Actor.

He's a regular staple in Wes Anderson films, having starred in five of them, including The French Dispatch, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and The Grand Budapest Hotel. The Brutalist just won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Drama and Adrienne Brody won for best actor in a motion picture drama. Adrienne Brody, welcome back to Fresh Air. Thank you Tanya, what a pleasure to be here. There are so many layers to this film, many of which are personal to you. Your mother is a Hungarian refugee who fled the revolution in 56 and started again here in the United States. Can you take me to that day that you first got the script? And was the connection immediate?

Yes, it's a remarkable thing to find something that speaks to a struggle, a resilience, a sense of something so intimate, like my mother's journey of fleeing Hungary and my grandparents and having to leave everything behind and those hardships that not only speak to me personally but to so many from many different backgrounds. And I just was in awe when I read the script and feeling how right I was for this role. What did your mother share with you about her experience immigrating here? Well, those stories are very intimate to me. You know, there's a very interesting parallel with the character that I play, Laszlo Toth, who is this Hungarian architect who really finds purpose and how his work, even how the works of architects of that era were really informed by the traumas of post-war, of that time and

how that influenced the architecture to come. I feel like my mother as an artist, her beautiful sensitivity and empathy for others, all of that is enhanced from her own struggles and her own consciousness of the struggles of others. But she shared so much along the years with me, both stories of my grandparents and her having to say goodbye to her friends without... She was only told she was having to flee the day before they left. How old was she? She was 13, and she had to say goodbye to her best friend and went to her house.

And her friend said, okay, well, I'll see you later. And my mother didn't quite have a response and said, hopefully, or something along those lines where she knew what was coming but wasn't able to tell her friend. Right. So those kind of moments are, those are big ones in our lives. Right. You know, the other thing I'm hearing from you is because you say that like you were

made for this role, that you were able to, through your life, just in your mom's way of being, understand that immigrant experience of coming here with nothing and trying to make a life out of it? Yeah, it was also, she's done remarkably well. And she's a real incredible artist. Sylvia Plahi, I don't know if we've referenced her, but she is a, I'll meet people quite often in New York who say, oh yeah, yeah, I know who you are, but referenced her, but she is a... I'll meet people quite often in New York who say, oh, yeah, yeah, I know who you are, but your mom, she's the artist.

And she's done such great, great things, and has devoted her life to that. But the struggles for my grandfather, I think, were more pronounced primarily with his... He had a very strong accent, not dissimilar to my characters. And I think it's, it's hard to be an outsider, you know, it's hard to be a foreigner even though

you attempt to assimilate and to fit in. And that's very much a part of Laszlo's journey, and I got to honor that struggle of his in it. And also the dialect and specific sounds and rhythm that he had and personality traits that I was able to reflect upon were really quite wonderful to give a layer of truth to this character. You had to learn Hungarian, is that right?

Yes, I mean, I knew all the curse words from my childhood. I definitely knew them. There's some in the film that were not scripted that I've added, so that was an added benefit. But even the English is such a specific sound and dialect that it was very important to me that it rang true. We worked with a wonderful dialect coach and we found men of the 50s of that era of when my grandfather had arrived and it was a similar formality that was necessary and I found some clues that were really very helpful to keying into that. Did you spend a lot of time with your grandpa?

I did. I did. He passed when I was quite young, but I loved him. My parents often see how similar I am to him and how he was to me. They point that out. And it's always kept him very close. What's the thing that they say to you that reminds you? Well, he had a lot of similar aspirations. I mean, he wanted to be an actor at one point, too. And, um, but he, he was, um, passionate

and emotional person, which I am. And, um, he had a lot of qualities. When did you find out he wanted to be an actor? Um, only later. I guess, you know, I had started acting at quite a young age, but he had already passed. And, um, we often would say how proud he would have been I guess, you know, I had started acting at quite a young age, but he had already passed. And we often would say how proud he would have been to see me along the way.

I mean, it would be such a gift to be able to share this with my grandparents. I think it would just blow their mind. It has kind of given purpose to their sacrifice and it's something that's not lost on me, my own good fortune and the firm footing that I've been given through their hardships along the way is definitely something I honor daily. So to do this film, I feel really, it's quite wonderful. The film is set in Philadelphia, but am I right that it was shot in Hungary because of the environment in Budapest? It was like the closest thing to recreating that time period, that kind of minimalist almost bleak post-World War II aesthetic.

Had you spent a lot of time there before? I had visited and actually we shot... Hungary is, and Budapest is a film location destination. Part of the reasoning was that there are film labs there and Brady was using film and it's better than shipping it across borders from other locations that may have been less able to process all the dailies regularly. But also, yeah, there was a look and a feel. It was definitely helpful for me to be there. Also, our wonderful crew are all Hungarians and I had a responsibility to

sound good not only to live up to their expectations but to interact and hear them constantly was very very helpful in keeping me grounded and tonally feeling connected to that era. I want to play a clip so folks can hear a little bit from the movie, but first I want to just set up your character, Laszlo, arrives in the US in 47 and he goes to stay with his cousin in Philly, who's been in the US for a couple of years now, and he owns a furniture shop named Miller and Sons and I'm saying that because that is not your cousin's name. He does not have sons but he notes that Americans love a simple name and they also love a family

business. So your character works for his cousin designing furniture for the store and then one day the son of a wealthy businessman asks you to redesign his father's library as a surprise. And when the father, Harrison Lee Van Buren, who's played by Guy Pearce, returns home and sees this library, he's furious, he refuses to pay. This sends your character into a spiral until a little while later, Lee Van Buren searches and finds your character shoveling coal. He apologizes. He asks him to be a part of this new project to create a community center in honor of his deceased mother. And in this scene I'm about to play, Van Buren asks your character why he

chose architecture as a profession when he lived in Hungary. Van Buren, played by Pierce, speaks first. Nothing is of its own explanation. Is there a better description of a cube than that of its construction. There was a war on, and yet, it is my understanding that many of the sites of my projects had survived. They remain there, still in the city. When the terrible recollections of what happened in Europe cease to humiliate us, I expect for them to serve instead as a political stimulus, sparking the upheavals that so frequently occur in the cycles of peoplehood.

That's my guest today, Adrian Brody, in the new film, The Brutalist. He's in that scene with Guy Pearce. And you're known, you're pretty well known for going the extra mile to embody your characters, in particular with The Pianist. You did all sorts of stuff. You gave up your apartment, you put your stuff in storage with The Pianist, you did all sorts of stuff. You gave up your apartment, you put your stuff in storage, you moved to Europe, you learned to play the piano. I think that all the headlines talked about

how you starved yourself. I think you lost like 30 pounds. And you do this with all of, a lot of your films. For the movie Dummy, you literally slept with a dummy to play a ventriloquist. It depends what you mean by that. He slept in the same bed together, but I worked with it very, I had to learn how to be very close to it.

Were there any things in particular for this role that you kind of refashioned your life for to really embody Laszlo? You know, I only do what I feel is necessary to find a closeness and a sense of truth so that I can, you know, quote, act less, you know, and feel honest in an interpretation. I can't portray a man who's starving if I don't understand hunger. I can't portray the physical shift of a man who's starved by not losing that weight.

I can't understand classical music without knowing to play it, you name it. And fortunately, a lot of that work that I had done in an effort to honor Spielman and the pianist and really to honor one man's journey that represented the loss of six million and spoke to such a horrific time in our history gave me a great deal of insight and understanding in what Laszlo's past experiences were that he is just on the precipice of overcoming as he arrives to the United States. And so while this movie is a vastly different story and a story

about an immigrant's journey, and it is also the journey of someone who's endured that. And it's quite remarkable how that has lived with me and given me greater insight years later in a role like this. Lyle Dixon How did that role give you insight? Because I will tell you, I watched the pianist again and then I watched the brutalist and so I kind of watched them back to back. And of course, as you said, yeah, there are some heavy times, but really like a very, it was really important for me to watch it that way and I'm glad I did. As you said, they are two very different films and your characters are different, but they do feel like to me that they are speaking to each other. I don't know if that's the right way to put it. Maybe it's that they

both hit a similar emotional note. I'm wondering how you see that. Well, they both reference this time that has changed the shape and face of this world indelibly. And they both reference how intolerance and oppression and anti-Semitism and forces that are ugly exist and have deprived us of so much beauty in this world. This movie, The Brutalist, is a fictional story. And the reason it's a fictional story is because when Brady and Mona were doing their research to try and write a film about a European architect who survived the Nazi occupation and carried on his work in America, there were none to be found because they'd all been killed. And then Brady and Mona had to find references of other wonderful creatives who were similar,

and like Marcel Brouwer, who has left a wonderful legacy of work. As an architect. As an architect, but had left in the mid-30s, fortunately. So I think the films obviously speak to this horrific time and speak to the power of art and the beauty and the capacity for the human spirit to endure and the power of the ability to create beauty and lightness amidst darkness and to find purpose in art to transcend that darkness. The use of silence in both of the films is also really powerful.

In The Pianist, the silence is because Spielman is alone in his hiding from the Nazis. But in The Brutalist, from my view, the silence plays another role. It plays a lens into the life of an immigrant. Like on a very practical sense, When you are coming to a new country and you don't speak the language well, you are other, you are an outsider. As you're saying, like that's a lonely experience. And so there are probably huge swaths of time where there is silence, especially when you don't have your family with you. Matthew 14 And you don't have the words, you don't have the vocabulary or confidence to speak in another language. I can understand a fair amount of French, but I'm very

reticent to start speaking, especially when I'm in France, because I'm just not confident with that. And, you know, the pressure of coming to a new land and trying to communicate and express yourself in a way is very hard for many people. But yeah, I see what you're saying. I just respond to the circumstances as I can with the understanding of that character. And a lot of the silence that exists or does not exist in a film is also up to the filmmaker and the editor.

And the beauty of this film, and you can correct me if you feel differently, but in spite of its length, it does not feel long. And the beauty of its length is that you are afforded moments that feel very real and personal because you can sit with the characters and experience those moments, and they aren't truncated in an effort to keep a scene lively and edgy for the sake of pace. And that takes a very confident and brave filmmaker and one who understands the nuance of language and storytelling and trusts in his actors and gives them the space and honors those magical

moments that can be created. Our guest today is award-winning actor Adrian Brody. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley and this is Fresh Air. Wait, wait, don't tell me. Fresh Air? Up first. NPR News Now, Planet Money, Ted Radio Hour, ThruLine, the NPR Politics Podcast, Code Switch, Embedded, Books We Love, Wildcard are just some of the podcasts you can enjoy sponsor free with NPR+. Get all sorts of perks across more than 20 podcasts with the bundle option. Learn more at plus.npr.org. Okay, I want to ask you about a topic that is very NPR. Your collaborations with the much beloved filmmaker Wes Anderson.

You starred in about five of his movies, is that right? Yes, I guess I have. Can you remind us of how the two of you began working together? Well, I love Wes. He's such an amazing person and fantastic and unique filmmaker. We first met for The Darjeeling Limited, which I shot with Owen Wilson and Jason Swartzman. The three of us portrayed brothers and

our character's father had passed away and we take a trip throughout India together to reconnect and find our way through that trauma. It was such a beautiful life experience. We all traveled India together and we lived in the same house and I bought a motorcycle when I was there and I lived there. I lived in Jodhpur for the most part and traveled around India. And it's very, very special and I'm so grateful for Wes for

including me in his family right away and all the wonderful creative experiences he's enabled me to have and life experiences and all the many creative people and actors who I admire that I've developed friendships and greater connection with through just dinners on his sets. Yeah, I heard that you guys... I just am so, yeah, he's just, he knows how to do something very inclusive and I think it's really wonderful. Yeah, I think Jeffrey Wright noted that there's a kind of traveling circus that Wes is the

ringmaster of because he does have many of the same actors who appear in his films and on the set actually treats you all very much like family with these dinners that happened after filming. You have talked a bit about this in the past, but there's also this playfulness and specificity in the way that Wes Anderson shoots his films. And you have to be a lot of things. You have to be ironic and cheeky while on camera. And you have to do all this while staying

in a single shot. I was wondering, is there a scene or a time in one of his movies that you remember that really challenged you in this regard? Yeah, it's quite demanding. It gives off this impression of everything being off the cuff and quirky and alive. But it requires such a precision,

not only from the actors, but from the camera department, lighting shifts, he does a lot of practical effects. He'll have cameras coming on and off of a dolly, for instance. So that's very challenging to do smoothly. And that is essentially Sanjay, who's our, his master dolly grip, who has been with us and with him since we've worked in Darjeeling together and is now part of his crew on everything, is really a master at his craft. So much is a dance between us and him enabling those shots to work.

He will literally have the complex task of coming off a Dolly track and going on to a very smooth surface and then reconnecting to a new track and going along another set of rails. What does that mean for you as an actor as you're in that shot? Everyone's hoping that nobody else drops the ball, because you have to just do it again and again until you're all in sync. And I know through experience what works for Wes and what doesn't.

I know how not to veer from certain things that are quite important to him. And certain actors are very good at that and certain actors are less good at that specificity. And you're all working together in this moving master and it has to be, it's very exacting. And I do remember a scene where I was up at the end of the scene in the French dispatch

and Tilda Swinton and Lois Smith, who was a wonderful actress, who was probably in her late seventies and her eighties, had this massive monologue to deliver with tremendous precision as well as tilde and then there were all these complex camera moves and then it lands on me and then I have this monologue to finish it and it was such pressure to not ruin it when I knew that they had done something so perfect. So to be last up is a real, you better hit it home. Did you hit it home?

Oh yeah, but I mean, it's a team effort and there is a need for everyone to lift everyone else up for it to work. If you're just joining us, my guest is Oscar and Golden Globe winning actor, Adrian Brody. We're talking about his new film, The Brutalist, which just won the Golden Globe for best motion picture drama.

We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh Air. I know you've been acting since you were very young. How old were you when you first started? I think my first professional job was 12 years old. Before acting, I started doing magic. You could call it a professional job. I think I earned $50 to do a children's birthday party in its entirety.

But I loved magic and I found that the storytelling that's involved in addition to creating the was a gateway into an understanding of performance and precision in performance. But I found a love for acting at a very, very young age and then was fortunate to work pretty consistently over the years. I didn't have a big career for many years, but I I was a working actor and I Have always been very grateful for that 12 years old is a Remarkably young age to feel so directed and passionate in what you do were your parents leading you Were you leading the charge? How did it come about

that you took this on at that age? Yeah, I just joked about it last night. I said, you know, acting beats working for a living. And, you know, it is very hard work in all seriousness, but it is such a joy and it's always different. And I always had a very curious spirit and that curiosity of my childhood lives on in me. And I grew up in New York City, I grew up in Queens, I took the train all the time. I had to take four trains each way to go to drama school. I got accepted to performing arts and it was a public school, but it gave me wonderful foundation early on.

It wasn't just a public school. You're talking about the school that, the high school that the film fame was based on, right? That's where you went to high school. Yes. I mean, it's not merely a public school, but it was a remarkable school, but it was a public high school, meaning I was, by being selected and making it into the drama department, I was given four acting classes a day within the public school system, which is remarkable and was very helpful for me. But along the way to get to school, I'd have to take the train. And I learned so much about character along those, that train ride and this diverse city. And some of those discoveries in those years informed choices I made even in the pianist years later of you know witnessing

characteristics and watching people. You name it. Yes. Watching people. What was that first role? What were your roles when you were first starting out at 12? I was doing theater. I'd first done some work with Elizabeth Suedos at BAM at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. And I'd gotten an off-Broadway play in the Lower East Side that I take the train in from after junior high school and go to work and try not to get jumped in the East Village and go to work each day.

I loved it. I really loved it. And at just turning 14, or just turned 14, I had booked the lead role in a public television film. So I went off to Nebraska and shot a movie. Do you still have that movie? Oh yeah, you could probably find it. It's called Home at Last. I'm quite a boy in it. It was wonderful. And that too, it spoke to a time in history. I played an orphan in the 1800s. And at the time, many orphaned children were being adopted and shipped off to the Midwest by families on farms. And they were given a home and education and religion, but they were also cheap labor and they were put to work. And it spoke to

that struggle and that time in history. And so even at a very young age, I was gravitating towards and being selected for roles that spoke to things that were of some relevance. I'm really happy about that. You talk quite a bit about your mother and your father's influence. Your mother, this noted photographer, she used to be a staff photographer for the Village Voice, you say. People will say to you, oh, you are the son of Sylvia because she's so well respected and your father is an educator. But I'm curious, growing up, how did your mother's work and

seeing her in her creativity maybe influence your thoughts on the perceptions on what you could be. And had you thought about being anything else? Was acting just like a foregone conclusion? It's a lovely, lovely question. And, you know, my parents are a unit, you know? They've always stood together an embrace of me and in nurturing me and my individuality and not suppressing my individuality and my rambunctious nature as a child,

and my enthusiasm and curiosity of the world. And they've only enhanced that. And my mother's work has been so influential on me as an artist and my, first of all, in me encountering acting is the result of her having an assignment to photograph the American Academy of Dramatic Arts which preceded my education in performing arts. Where I started as a very young boy because she had seen an acting class, they had acting classes for children that were, she saw in me what all these kids were doing and she had that intuition. So even just encountering it came as a result of her photographic work. But then I am also the son, only son of a photographer,

so I am very much a focal point inization of my city and the world through that very beautiful specific lens since birth. And whereas I grew up with film everywhere in my home. Negatives being hung from the showers and film canisters in the tub and the smell of fixative in the dark room smelling like home and my mother and film test prints on record racks all strewn around the floor in front of the landing in front of my bedroom. So since I could crawl, I was seeing imagery everywhere and beautiful imagery. And I think that made art and its accessibility very tangible and available. Well, it also strikes me that both of you all

are observers in that regard. Yes, I often see a very similar, and I don't know if it's something I've learned through my mother or something through osmosis or genetically, but I am very similar to my mother in a lot of ways creatively. And I love imagery and I have an eye, I don't have quite her eye for it,

but I do, um, I tend to retain a lot both in a photographic memory and an emotional recall of things that is very much like my mother's, how she sees an image and captures it and catches that magic or incongruity in something that makes it so special. And I just am, I don't carry a camera as much. And I really should and I always say that I should, but I don't. But I do retain a lot and try to bring it to life within me in the roles that I play.

Has your mom seen this film yet? And if so, what's been her reaction to it? Oh, they've seen the film and they're, both my parents have seen the film and my mother is very, very moved by it. And it makes me so happy and proud to get to share this with them. They know how hard I have been working towards finding something like this and how patient I have been. And they, I think, it speaks to so much of her own story and struggle that I am really profoundly grateful to be able to present to her. Adrienne Brody, it's been a real pleasure to talk with you about this latest work and your work overall. Thank you so much. Tanya, thank you very much. I enjoyed this conversation. I have to say I've really enjoyed hearing your voice. You

enhance the experience and I think to the listeners as well so thank you. Adrienne Brody stars in the award-winning film The Brutalist. It's now playing in select theaters including IMAX and opens nationwide on January 17th. Coming up, Critic at Large John Powers reviews Baby Girl, starring Nicole Kidman. This is Fresh Air. The new movie Baby Girl by Helena Raine is a drama about a successful married businesswoman who begins an affair with an intern half her age. Currently in theaters, it stars Nicole Kidman in a turn that has made her one of this year's

awards frontrunners. Our critic-at-large John Powers says that this erotic drama pulls you right in, but isn't quite as daring as its lead performance. Ever since silent film audiences swooned for Rudolph Valentino and the vamp Theodore Berra, the movies have packed a sexual charge. But filmmakers have always had trouble dealing with sex head-on. While there have been scads of hot love scenes, movies addressing sexual desire nearly always feel bogus, exploitative, moralistic, or unintentionally funny.

Even Stanley Kubrick foundered In Making Eyes Wide Shut, a dreamlike movie in which Tom Cruise was a husband haunted and roused by the possible infidelity of his wife, played by Nicole Kidman. We enter a similar dreamland in Baby Girl, a new film by Dutch filmmaker Helena Rijn that boasts a thrillingly haywire performance by Kidman, who's our bravest, most risk-kicking actress. Set during a seemingly eternal Christmas season, Baby Girl begins with a classic cliché, the high-powered career woman who secretly yearns for sexual submission to a man,

and transforms it into a strange fantasy of empowerment. Kidman stars as Romy Mathis, the CEO of a high-tech shipping company in New York. She's got a country house, two cool daughters, and a husband, Jacob, who's so attractive he's played by Antonio Banderas. But — and it's a decisive but — their sex life has never worked for Romy. Nineteen years into her marriage, she fakes extravagant orgasms, then sneaks away to satisfy herself while watching dodgy

domination porn. All that changes one morning when, walking to work, she watches a striking young man tame a big, out-of-control dog. As in a dream, this same striking young man immediately turns up in the company offices as a new intern, Samuel. He's played by Harris Dickinson. At once mumbling and aggressive, like a 50s method actor, Samuel somehow sees straight into Romney's roiling psyche.

Their early meetings always have a sexual edge, starting when they talk in the company kitchen when she asks him to bring her a cup of coffee. Hey. How'd you get that dog to calm down? a cup of coffee. Samuel senses that Romy fantasizes about being ordered what to do. And though she initially resists his inappropriate forwardness, getting involved with interns is after all strictly forbidden, we know it's only a matter of time. After a bit of verbal sparring, he has Romy doing his bidding in the bedroom.

He calls her baby girl and helps her achieve the pleasure she's longed for. Given the unusual dynamic of this relationship, she's his boss at work, he's her boss in bed, baby girl promises a daringly grown-up look at both sexuality and power. Yet for all the early talk about the movie being transgressive, to use a played-out buzzword, I was struck by how tame it is. Even as Romy says she needs sexual danger, none of her desires take her, or the movie, any place truly dark, or even Fifty Shades of Grey.

Now, to her credit, Reign makes a point of not trying to turn us on. She dishes up none of the laughable nudie sleaze found in movies like Nine and a Half Weeks. Yet in her fixation on Romy's inner life, whose every throb and flicker Kibben heroically registers, she makes the classic Hollywood mistake of short-changing everything else. For starters, we have no sense of who Samuel actually is or what he wants. This matters in a film where both Romy and Samuel keep using the word power. Romy may run the company, but she's also an HR nightmare. Samuel could shipwreck her career with a few well-chosen words. I kept waiting to find out what Samuel is after and

what tough choices their dangerous liaison will force her to make. That's precisely what happens in Catherine Briault's great new film Last Summer, in which another successful middle-aged woman commits a far greater transgression than Romy, then fights, even cruelly, to get herself out of the mess. There's no such reckoning here. Reign is so eager not to punish Romy for her sexual tastes that the film raises questions of power only to duck them. Baby Girl's problem is not Romy's desire to be dominated. It's making her erotic liberation so triumphant that the story's sexual politics don't matter, all of which feels out of touch with our post-MeToo era.

After all, if a male CEO had kinky-sacked with a young female intern, I don't think current audiences would give him a pass just because she made him happier in bed than his wife. John Powers reviewed the new film Baby Girl starring Nicole Kidman. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, Oscar-winning actor Tilda Swinton. In the room next door, she stars as a woman who intends to end her life after her cancer treatment fails.

So we'll talk about death, grief, her love of costumes and androgynous style, and why she doesn't think of herself as an actor. I hope you'll join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. us. Thea Challener, Susan Nkundee, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.