Adrien Brody’s 10 best films, ranked

He's a hot favourite to win the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in The Brutalist, but his newest film is just the beginning of an illustrious career. Here, we count down Brody's best performances

By Cayle Reid

Published: Feb 25, 2025

IT HAS BEEN more than two decades since Adrien Brody became the youngest ever winner of the Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in 2002’s The Pianist. Now, 12 years later, he’s up for the same honour for his role in The Brutalist.

This is only the second time Brody has been nominated for Best Actor, but interspersed between his first and second nominations are a collection of films that have helped cement his reputation as one of the most talented and versatile actors in Hollywood. From a stint as a beast-battling reluctant hero in King Kong to portraying a scheming antagonist in The Grand Budapest Hotel, Brody has range. He can be menacing, eccentric, romantic, dejected or heartbreaking. It’s all in the actor’s wheelhouse.

Whether or not he wins a second Oscar, Brody will go down as one of the greatest actors of his generation. Here, we rank his best films to date.

10. Liberty Heights, 1999

In one of Brody’s earlier roles he played Van Kurtzman, who finds himself the subject of racial injustice due to his Jewish heritage in 1999’s Liberty Heights. Meanwhile, Van’s younger brother falls in love with a Black woman, with their romance sparking despite the couple’s cultural differences and immensely troubling family dynamics. The film is a poignant examination of class and race in modern America and has held up surprisingly well. An early sign of Brody’s potential.

9. Detachment, 2012

In Detachment, Brody plays a substitute teacher who drifts from school to school and subsequently becomes emotionally detached from his students, coworkers and life itself. The film highlights the fallacies of the education system, where educators fight a constant battle against burnout and disconnection. One of Brody’s more underrated performances.

8. Hollywoodland, 2006

Hollywoodland is a crime thriller that stars Brody as an old-school private detective investigating the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of a fictional Superman actor. Brody’s Louis Simo is sceptical of the official cause of death, suicide, and attempts to uncover the truth. Although, the tooth-pick chewing, sleaze-oozing Simo’s personal life isn’t all that dissimilar than that of the man whose death he is investigating.

7. Summer of Sam, 1999

An early work of Spike Lee, Summer of Sam is set in the summer of 1977, during which David Berkowitz (more commonly known as Son of Sam) carried out a string of deadly shootings in New York City. Rather than focus on Berkowitz, the film follows the effect of his killings on a group of fictional Bronx residents who live in growing distrust of each other. Punk rocker Richie, played by Brody, is one of those residents. We didn’t know we needed Adrien Brody as a punk rocker until we saw this film.

6. The Thin Red Line, 1998

You may not have even realised that Adrien Brody is in The Thin Red Line amid the film’s stacked ensemble cast, but he was originally set for a much bigger role. Brody plays the young Corporal Fife, a member of the 93^rd regiment during the battle of Guadalcanal in World War II and the main protagonist in the book the film is based on. As the story goes, director Terence Malick originally shot more than five hours of footage for film with Brody as its focus, but decided to recut it to position Jim Caviezel’s Private Witt as the central character. Brody didn’t find out about this decision until he sat down at the film’s premiere to discover most of his scenes had been left on the cutting room floor. Nevertheless, Brody made his presence felt in his limited screen time in what was his first venture into Oscar territory, as The Thin Red Line was nominated for seven Academy Awards.

5. King Kong, 2005

As the co-lead in Peter Jackson’s ambitious King Kong remake, Brody took on a role more akin to an action star than a prestige actor – and it paid off, as Brody’s highest grossing film to date. As reluctant hero Jack Driscoll, Brody brings some emotional depth to the over-three-hour spectacle that is King Kong in a role that sees him run from dinosaurs, fight monstrous insects and compete with the titular giant ape for Naomi Watts’ love.

4. The Darjeeling Limited, 2007

A long-time collaborator with Wes Anderson – having appeared in five of the director’s films – The Darjeeling Limited was Brody’s first Anderson flick. He plays one of three brothers on a journey across India following their father’s death, with the goal of reconnecting. As middle brother Peter, Brody presents a portrait of a man grappling with unresolved grief and the trials of impending fatherhood.

3. The Grand Budapest Hotel, 2014

Another Wes Anderson film, The Grand Budapest Hotel follows the concierge of a famous alpine hotel who finds himself embroiled in a fight for a vast inheritance after a hotel guest leaves a famous renaissance painting to the concierge in her will. So, where does Brody figure into all of this? He plays Dimitri, the rich hotel guest’s volatile son and presumptive heir to her fortune. Proof that Brody can also play a villain.

2. The Brutalist, 2024

23 years after The Pianist netted him his first Oscar, Brody once again donned an Eastern European accent to play a holocaust survivor with an artistic slant in The Brutalist. A calling card? Perhaps. In the more recent of the two films, Brody plays László Tóth, a Hungarian-Jewish architect who immigrates to the United States in the aftermath of World War II. Tóth struggles to achieve the American dream until a wealthy patron takes an interest in his work, for better or for worse.

1. The Pianist, 2002

This may be an anticlimactic selection for Adrien Brody’s best film, but it’s also a barely debatable truth. Brody’s performance in The Pianist brought heartbreaking accuracy to the story of Władysław Szpilman, a noted Polish-Jewish pianist whose life was disrupted by the second World War. Separated from his family, Szpilman escapes internment at a concentration camp and wanders the ravaged streets of Warsaw in a desperate bid for survival. Moving doesn’t begin to describe Brody’s performance.

Where to watch The Brutalist in Australia

If you’re trying to watch The Brutalist in Australia before the Oscars on March 3rd, you’ll need to head to your local cinema. The Brutalist is currently showing exclusively in theatres in Australia and no date for a streaming release has been announced.