Fresh Air - Best Of: Tilda Swinton / Adrien Brody

Episode Date: January 11, 2025

Tilda Swinton stars as a woman with cancer who decides she wants to end her life in the new Pedro Almodóvar film The Room Next Door. She asks a friend to stay with her for her last weeks. She spoke with Terry Gross about the role and her own experience bearing witness to the deaths of loved ones.Also, we hear from award-winning actor Adrien Brody. He stars in the film The Brutalist as a Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor who seeks a fresh start in post-WWII America. Brody tells Tonya Mosley how drew from his mother and grandfather's experience as Hungarian immigrants for the role. Also, film critic Justin Chang reviews the new Mike Leigh film Hard Truths.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Dave Davies. Today, Tilda Swinton. She stars in the new Pedro Almodovar film as a woman who has suffered from cancer and therapies haven't worked and now intends to end her life within a month. She asks a friend, played by Julianne Moore, to stay with her during that time. And we hear from Oscar and now Golden Globe award-winning actor Adrian Brody. He stars in the film The Brutalist, which just won the Golden Globe for best motion picture drama. Brody plays a Hungarian Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor who seeks a fresh start

in post-war America. Brody drew from his mother and grandfather's experience as Hungarian immigrants for the role. Also, film critic Justin Chang reviews the new Mike Lee film, Hard Truths. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Dave Davies. Terry has our first interview. I'll let her introduce it. My guest Tilda Swinton stars in a new beautiful movie called The Room Next Door. She plays a war correspondent who has dodged death several times. Now she has cancer for which she's received harsh treatments including in clinical trials. But the cancer progresses. She's rejecting more treatment,

refusing to continue suffering, and has decided it's time to end her life. The film is about suffering and death and choice, but it's a beautiful film because of the sometimes poetic dialogue, the emotional depth, the relationship between the two main characters, and the contrast between Swinton's ghostly presence in the film and the vibrant color-saturated world around her, including the clothes, the walls, and the furniture, and the woods. It's a form of beauty and contrast

I've come to expect from the film's writer and director Pedro Almodovar. He's Spanish and this is his first English language feature film. Tilda Swinton started off in the film, Avant Garde. She made several films with the director, Derek Jarman, including her first film, Caravaggio, and never expected or maybe never even sought commercial success. But she got it anyway. Many filmgoers were introduced to her in the title role of the 1992 film, Orlando,

adapted from a 1928 Virginia Wolf novel, in which a young nobleman, a favorite of Queen Elizabeth's, inexplicably wakes up as a woman. Swinton won an Oscar for her performance in the popular 2007 legal thriller Michael Clayton. She's been in several Wes Anderson films, the Joanna Hogg films, The Souvenir and The Eternal Daughter, and the Luca Guadagnino films, I Am Love, Suspirer, and A Bigger Splash, the Julio Torres film, Problemista, and the Cone Brothers, Hail Caesar, and Burn After Reading.

Swinton even has a place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the Ancient One. Her new film, The Room Next Door, is adapted from the 2020 novel What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunes. Swinton's character Martha is planning to end her life. She doesn't want to die in her Manhattan home surrounded by things she loves. She thinks it will be easier to die in a house in the woods that has no personal connection. So she rents a beautiful home in the woods for one month, planning on dying before the month is up. She wants solitude, but she alsos a beautiful home in the woods for one month, planning on dying before the

month is up. She wants solitude, but she also wants a friend to accompany her. After several friends decline, she asks an old friend whom Martha had lost touch with. The friend, Ingrid, played by Julianne Moore, is a novelist who has found out Martha is sick and has been visiting her. Ingrid's latest novel draws her in her own fear of death. Here's Tilda Swinton as Martha explaining the situation to Ingrid. I will not go out in mortifying anguish.

I've gotten hold of a euthanasia pill. Don't ask me how. On the dark web you can find almost anything. I also have an abundance of opioids for the moments of pain. And don't look at me like that. I'm not asking you to convince me otherwise. I don't know what to say. I'm hoping you'll say yes. Yes to what?

To my asking you to help me. Help you what? I faced death several times, but I've always been accompanied. We reporters formed a kind of mobile family. I faced death several times, but I've always been accompanied. We reporters formed a kind of mobile family. This is another war. I'm not afraid of it. But like the other times I faced death, I don't want to be alone, Ingrid. I'm asking you to be in the next room.

Tilda Swinton, welcome to Fresh Air. I love this movie. I love your performance in it. And I want to congratulate you for making something that is so moving with such a great performance. Thank you so much, Terry. It's such a pleasure to be here, and happy New Year to everybody.

Yes, and happy New Year to you. I know you had friends, including your close friend, Derek Jarman, who made the first films you were in, who died during the AIDS epidemic, and your parents died. Are there ways, I know you have a lot of people in your life who have died, are there ways in which the screenplay and your character

connect with you on a very personal level? Absolutely. It's an incredibly personal and resonant film for me. And when Pedro showed me the screenplay, I was so grateful to him. Not only because it reflects so many conversations that he and I have had over the time that we've been friends, but also very much my experience of the last 15 years supporting and bearing witness to loved ones who have been dismounting, as I like to think of it. It's a great opportunity

to place that witness upon a big screen for people and with a kind of clear-eyedness which I think is always emblematic of Almodovar's work. He's so determined always not to look away and that's absolutely what this film is about. So many of Almodovar's movies are about death or pain or hospitalization and they're all so beautiful. And also about surviving things of all kinds, surviving torturous relationships with our parents or surviving, you know, a long absence from a loved lover. It's always about overcoming and somehow scaring away the things that frighten us ourselves.

And what they say, embrace the tiger, return to the mountain. That's very much his attitude to life. He is pretty fearless, I would say. So what was it like for you after having born witness to and helped people who were close to you and were dying, what's it like for you to be on the other side in this role as the person who is dying and wants to terminate her life? It was a profound blessing, Terry, because when he first sent me the script, I did have to double check with him who he was asking me to play. And when he, because as I say, I've been in what I call the Ingrid position so often in

my life, and thankfully so, it is a great privilege to occupy that seat. But And just in case people get the characters' names confused, Ingrid is the person who's helping your character, your character is dying. Yes. She is accompanying you. Ingrid is the witness. Ingrid is the name of the person who Julianne Moore plays. And when he told me that he wanted me to play Martha, I remember this sense of relief. Because

it was the snow that I didn't know, because it was going to be a new track. But it was a snow that I had wondered about for so long, having sat on the other side of the chasm, as I kind of think of it. And I'd heard so many loved ones and friends saying to me, it's so much worse for you than me. I'm in the hot seat. I'm going down, but you're having to bear this. And so to test that was a very interesting project. And it did bear out, I have to say. There is something, I'm not suggesting that, and I'm not, you know, don't want to be too grandiose

about this. I mean, this was a drama that we were figuring out. It wasn't actual experience, but I got a tiny bit closer to imagining myself in that position. And it's not a fearful place to be. I didn't find. The friends and family whose deaths you witnessed and whose end of life you witnessed, were they fearful of death? Some of them. And yet, with a couple of exceptions, that fear dissipated and was replaced with something really inspiring,

which was the essential acceptance of the inevitable. I mean, this is the thing that this film is really about. You say with accuracy that it's about suffering. And of course, technically it is about dying, but it's really more than anything, Terry, about living. It's about someone who has made the decision to live right up to the wire, go on living, and for that to be the banner that she's carrying. And it's about the interest of life and an interest in life. And about someone who, by the way,

sets her cap at investing her last months, her last weeks in the three things that I've always thought were the things that we'll always see us through, friendship, art, and nature. And so it is so full of, packed with energy and you reference the colors which are always there in Pedro's work.

The colors also bring it energy. The way in which someone who is mortally ill is choosing the brightest and most beautiful jersey she can find to go out in and end up in a kind of Mishima pose in the most beautiful yellow suit and bright red lipstick. There's that feeling of an investment in energy, which I think is really, really profound and worth reflecting on. I think a life spent considering how we're going to spend our end is not wasted time, you know.

It's a really important thing to think about. She says, I think I deserve a good death. I think she's right. I think we all do. Your character is kind of ghostly in it. And, you know, you're very pale because you're dying. And it's such a contrast to the world of saturated color that surrounds you.

And I'm wondering, did you do anything to make yourself appear more ghostly? We worked, I worked with my great friend and comrade Morag Ross, who's the first makeup artist I ever worked with my great friend and comrade, Morag Ross, who's the first makeup artist I ever worked with. I worked with her with Derek Jarman. Caravaggio was the first film we both made. We worked very closely together on creating this feeling that Martha is both here and not here all the time. Of course, there's a graduation in her pallor.

There's a graduation in her presence. So I take care of the spiritual presence, if you like, and she was very attendant with the way in which Martha moves through the spaces, as you say, in a slightly removed phantom-like way. But that's what the film is doing. If someone is, and I've been privileged to be alongside people who have planned to leave,

they know that they're gonna go, and they've even set a date. And they are, at that point, in such an interesting state, because they are half in, half out, on a tightrope, which is so tangential and so delicate and actually really exquisite. And she's there, she's on that tightrope. So she isn't fully present and her body is definitely on the decline. It's shutting down. And she talks about that very touchingly I think about how difficult and

painful it is to feel your brain which you've relied on, she has relied on all her life. She's had a very, very sharp brain all her life and to feel it failing her, shutting down and struggling with her cognizance is super, super painful for her. And it's that of course course, that drives her further out into the ocean. We're listening to Terry's interview with Tilda Swinton. She stars in the new Pedro Almodovar film, The Room Next Door.

It's now showing in select theaters. We'll hear more of their conversation after a break. I'm Dave Davies, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. You're from a military family. Seems to me you went in the opposite direction in your artistic life. You got your start in the avant-garde and the avant-garde, it breaks the rules. It's unconventional and in the military there are rules that are strictly followed and it's hard to be, unless you're thinking of like an unconventional like war strategy and you're in a leadership position, it's

hard to be unconventional in the military. Do you feel like you went in an opposite direction? It's so funny, Terry, because the more and more I live, the more I think that I'm going right down the middle of the family tendency, actually. Really? When I think of comradeship, when I think of, you know, the project, when I think of, you know, the kind of trench warfare of independent filmmaking, when I think of walkie-talkies, when I think of, you know, kind of packed lunches in dark fields. I have a brother who was a soldier for many years and we've always compared notes and I think we live very similar lives in fact and less perilous to make films, but for sure. But you're right, there is a chain of command that I know that soldiers live and die by, that we don't necessarily, certainly not,

maybe in studio filmmaking more. Maybe that's more the hard army. But yeah, in the world of filmmaking that I sprung out of, it's a collective and that's not necessarily what an army is. And that's not necessarily what an army is. Yeah, I think in that sense, yes, I did branch out from the family trade. But having said that, you know, there is this very strange epiphany in my recent years that I was always told by my parents that I was a bit of a strange thing and that there were no artists in our family. But I've recently discovered, since they died, I may say, that our family tree is littered with artists.

And yeah, I'm not, in fact, an apple falling that far from the tree at all. Something that's similar and different is clothing. Like in the military, you have a uniform, which is kind of a costume, but it's a uniform. Everybody has the uniform. And in movies, like you've worn so many different kinds of costumes over the years. So do you feel like clothing, like your interest in clothing, was that influenced for, in the negative or positive, by the uniforms of the military? And I don't know even if you ever saw your father or any other of your relatives,

or even your brother in uniform, and what that meant to you. No, no, no, you are absolutely right. Singularly inspired and informed by the uniforms. In fact, I'm making a piece of work now about that very thing, how central my response to my father and my grandfather's uniforms has been. I used to watch my parents getting dressed up to go out to grand parties, and my mother would wear some really nice silk dress and look beautiful, but my

father had all the glamour. He had, you know, the gold frogging and the medals and those black trousers with the scarlet stripe down the side. Scarlet, I mean, it occurred to me the other day, here I am working with Pedro Almodovar, who works in Scarlett. He is one of the great artists who work in Scarlett. Scarlett has always really meant as a child of a Scottish military family. Scarlett is an important thing for the British Army. It's hugely important and I have always been truly, sincerely and seriously interested in clothes and what they do for us and to us. I was one of four, but I have three brothers, no sisters, and I didn't have many dresses.

I wore a lot of hand-me-downs, as the third child often does, and they were boys' clothes. And, you know, nothing's different. I still wear boys' clothes. They are, you know, usually the different. I still wear boys' clothes. They are, you know, usually the most comfortable things to wear for me. But the fact that I can wear both, and I encourage everybody to wear both, by the way, which is why it's so important for people to understand that clothes are just choices and we can wear whatever we want and choose our identity every morning or every hour. That aspect of clothing has always been really important for me. I love

it. I think you've just described your interest in androgynous style. I don't even know that it's androgynous. I just feel that it's about being boundaryless. And you described, you know, with certain accuracy that Orlando, the Virginia Woolf novel and the film that we made in 1992 is about gender. I would suggest it's not only about gender, it's sort of glancingly about gender, but it's really more about boundarylessness, it's about classlessness, it's about internationalism, it's about someone who's immortal, by the way. And that feeling of endless possibility, that's something that

really fuels my motor. And I've always had that sense that, you know, why limit yourself? Why say, yeah, I'm going to be this kind of woman. I'm going to dress only like this. I'm going to be this kind of man. I'm going to dress and behave only like this. It's such a waste. You know, we don't feel that when we're children. I think maybe I had a very light-filled childhood before I went to boarding school when I was 10. I think that during those first 10 years I must have felt, and I'm only guessing at this, but I must have had a sort of bedrock of possibility. And I really loved it and I would like to keep it going in my life.

And we all knew it when we were little, you know, we could dress up as anything, a dog or a dinosaur or an old lady. Just get a stick and bend over. There's no great miracle to it. And we somehow, as we get older, we're encouraged to lose that sense of possibility and stick to our guns. And then if we want to change, it's some massive trauma to society. The whole idea of transitioning being terribly, you know, much other people's business, which of course it palpably is not. It is nobody's

business than the person whose life is being informed by it. AMT. You've described yourself as queer, but not in the LGBTQ spectrum. So when you use the word queer, what do you mean? I was named queer by my queer colleagues when I lived amongst them when I first became an artist in the 80s. We were all queer, meaning that we were living in a world that felt self-determining for us and felt very much at odds with what we call the straight world, the square world, which was not necessarily to do with, you know, heterosexuality or homosexuality. It was to do with an attitude of mind and an attitude of living. And so I was named, it's not that I named myself particularly, but I was named as a

queer fish. We were queer fish and I'm proud to continue to be a queer fish. And I've been in very happy and loving relationships with men for the last whatever, 30 years, with my children's beloved father, John Byrne, who died last year. Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't know that. He's one of my mothers, my teachers. He went last year. But he and I had these miraculous children. And then I've been with Sandra for 20 years, and we're very happy, but we're all queer. We're all queer fish. I know in boarding school you were bullied.

What were you bullied for? Do you know? Being queer, being odd, being quiet, being shy, being from Scotland. This was a very reductive English girls' private boarding school. And of course, the terrible things which we now know, if we are sentient adults, is that if you take a bunch of children, and we were children, I was 10, I was the youngest, they were mostly 11. But if you take a bunch of children from 11 to 17, and you take them away from their families, you know, there's a lot of grief there.

And so they act out. Some of them act out by bullying others. And some of them act out by just being quiet, which I did. I was just incredibly quiet, sitting in the corner. The wonderful thing is, there was somebody else sitting in the corner, and that was Joanna Hogg.

And she and I met on the first day of school. I was 10, she was 11. And she and I have been friends ever since and have become very close collaborators now. She's a great filmmaker. And she was the first filmmaker I worked with on her student film in 1986. And we made the souvenir films together with my own daughter

and then the Eternal Daughter, where I play both the mother and the daughter. So that was one blessing in the heart of that experience, and that was Joanna. Tilda Swinton, it's just been great to talk with you. Thank you so much, and thank you for making this movie. I just really love your new movie. Thank you, Terri, and for everything you do. It's such a breath of fresh air. Thank you so much. Be well. And you.

Tilda Swinton is starring in the new Pedro Almodovar film, The Room Next Door, now showing in select theaters. She spoke with Terry Gross. In 1997, Mary Ann Jean-Baptiste became the first black British actress to receive an Oscar nomination for Mike Lee's drama, Secrets and Lies. Now, nearly 30 years later, she and Lee have reunited on the comedic drama, Hard Truths, in which she plays a profoundly unhappy woman living in North London.

The performance has earned Jean Baptiste's best actress prizes from several critics groups. Our film critic, Justin Chang, has this review. In the many beautifully observed working class dramedies he's made over the past five decades, the British writer and director, Mike Lee, has returned again and again to one simple yet endlessly resonant question. Why are some people happy while others are not? Why does Nicola, the sullen twenty-something in Lee's 1990 film Life is Sweet, seem incapable

of even a moment's peace or pleasure? By contrast, how does Poppy, the upbeat heroine of Lee's 2008 comedy Happy Go Lucky, manage to greet every misfortune with a smile? Lee's new movie, Hard Truths, could have been titled Unhappy Golucky. It follows a middle-aged North London misanthrope named Pansy, who's played, in the single greatest performance I've seen this year, by Marianne Jean-Baptiste. You might know Jean-Baptiste from Lee's wonderful 1996 film, Secrets and Lies, in which she played a shy, unassuming London optometrist seeking

out her birth mother. But there's nothing unassuming about Pansy, who leads a life of seething, unrelenting misery. She spends most of her time indoors, barking orders and insults at her solemn husband, Kirtley, and their unemployed 22-year-old son, Moses. Pansy keeps a spotless home, but the blank walls and sparse furnishings are noticeably devoid of warmth, cheer, or personality. When she isn't cleaning, she's trying to catch up on sleep, complaining about aches,

pains, and exhaustion. Sometimes she goes out to shop or run errands, only to wind up picking fights with the people she meets—a dentist, a salesperson, a stranger in a parking lot. Back at home, she unloads on Kirtley and Moses about all the indignities she's been subjected to, and the general idiocy of the world around her. A name around the corner with that dog. Got it dressed up in a red coat and green booties. Why has the dog got on a coat? It's got fur, innit?

Must be sweating under there, stinking. That's cruelty to animals, that is. Putting it under all that plastic. I've got a mind to report him to the NSPCG or whatever they call them and her over there with that fat baby. Cold, cold, cold and she's walking up and down the street with nothing but a big pink bow on its bald head so everybody can tell it's a girl, like our care. Parading it around in the little outfit, not dressed for the weather, nah, with pockets.

What's a baby got pockets for? What's it gonna keep in its pocket? A knife? It's ridiculous. As you can hear from that virtuoso rant, Pansley has an insult comedian's ferocious wit and killer timing. While you wouldn't necessarily want to bump into her on the street, she makes for mesmerizing, even captivating on-screen company. Lee is often described as a Dickensian filmmaker, and for good reason. He's a committed realist with a gift for comic exaggeration. Like nearly all Lee's films, Hard Truths emerged from a rigorous months-long workshop process in which the director worked

closely with his actors to create their characters from scratch. As a result, Jean-Baptiste's performance, electrifying as it is, is also steeped in emotional complexity. The more time we spend with Pansy, the more we see that her rage against the world arises from deep loneliness and pain. Lee has little use for plot. He builds his stories from the details and detritus of everyday life, drifting from one character to the next. Twain Barrett is quietly heartbreaking as Pansy's son Moses, who isolates himself and spends his time either playing video games or going on long neighborhood walks.

and spends his time either playing video games or going on long neighborhood walks. Pansy's husband, Kirtley, is harder to parse. He's played by the terrific David Webber, with a passivity that's both sympathetic and infuriating. The most significant supporting character is Pansy's younger sister, Chantelle, played by the luminous Michelle Austin, another Secrets and Lies alum. Chantelle could scarcely be more different from her sister. She's a joyous, contented woman, with two adult daughters of her own, and she does everything she can to break through to pansy. In the movie's most affecting scene, Chantelle drags her sister to a cemetery to pay their respects to their mother, whose

sudden death five years ago, we sense, is at the core of Pansy's unhappiness. At the same time, Lee doesn't fill in every blank. He's too honest a filmmaker to offer up easy explanations for why people feel the way they feel. His attitude toward Pansy, and toward all the prickly, outspoken, altogether marvelous characters he's given us, is best expressed in that graveside scene, when Chantel wraps her sister in a tight hug and tells her, with equal parts exasperation and affection, I don't understand you, but I love you. Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker.

He reviewed Hard Truths. Coming up, we hear from Adrian Brody. His new film, The Brutalist, just won the Golden Globe for best motion picture drama. I'm Dave Davies, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. Tanya Moseley has our next interview. Here's Tanya. 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 three 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 and Adrian Brody won for best actor in a motion

picture drama. Adrian 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. And 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 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 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. 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 and 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 there 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. And he was a, my parents often see how similar I am to him and how he was to me.

And it's always kept him very close. Yes, it's very, yeah. It's always- What's the thing that they say to you that reminds, yeah. Well, he had a lot of similar aspirations. I mean, he wanted to be an actor at one point, too. And, but he was passionate and emotional person, which I am. And he had a lot of qualities.

When did you find out he wanted to be an actor? Only later. 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 two 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, you know,

less able to process all that, the dailies regularly. But also, you know, 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 know you've been acting since you were very young. When, how old were you when you first started? I think I, my first professional job was 12 years old. Before acting, I started doing magic and I was,

you could call it a professional job. I mean, 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 illusion 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 was a working actor. And I have always been very grateful for that. Twelve 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 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 there's a public school but it got accepted to performing arts and it was a public school, but it gave me a 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, it was, it's 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... Watching people. That train ride and this diverse city and, you know, 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. Yeah, 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. try not to get jumped in the East Village, go to work each day. And I loved it, I really loved it. And at just turning 14, or just turned 14, I booked the lead role in a public television film.

So I went off to Nebraska and shot a movie. Mm. Which my dad came with me. 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. And 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 know, 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 and 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 like 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, like, 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? 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. 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 in front of the lens that came from an artist's eye. And I also witnessed her imagery and her immortalization 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. And 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. 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. Adrienne Brody spoke with Tanya Mosley. He's currently starring in the film The Brutalist. It's now playing in select theaters, including IMAX, and opens nationwide on January 17. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden.

Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. For Terry Gross and Tonya Mosley, I'm Dave Davies.