"Olé, olé! Very good!" shouts Adrien Brody as we watch Antonio Banderas perform a flamenco turn in a corner of Emirates Palace's Etoile club. Just your average lunchtime at the Middle East International Film Festival perhaps, but this is not an average chat with Brody. Ahead of our interview I had been warned that he could sometimes be less than garrulous: quiet, somewhat brooding, in fact. On the other hand, this is also the actor whose roles have ranged from the disturbed village idiot in M Night Shyamalan's The Village to the dashing leading man in King Kong. He is the man who horses around with his co-stars on the red carpet and grabbed Halle Berry in a spontaneous kiss, as she handed him the Oscar statuette for Best Actor for his breakthrough role as a Holocaust survivor in The Pianist. And if his whooping appreciation of his fellow actor's dance skills are anything to go by then, jet lag notwithstanding, this is a good Brody day.
"I flew in yesterday, but I'm feeling really good," he agrees, rubbing his newly grown beard. "I think the sun, and the swimming in the ocean, makes me feel great. I get very excited at the prospect of travelling and seeing new places, and I haven't had a chance to visit this part of the world before. It's exciting." The reason Brody is here is because he is the star of the festival's gala opening movie, which was shown on Friday. The Brothers Bloom, which will be released into cinemas in December, sees Brody playing the orphan Bloom who has grown up with his brother Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) in foster homes, the pair developing into fine con men. As Bloom attempts to leave his criminal past behind him, Stephen persuades him into one last con, on the lovely, rich, eccentric Penelope (Rachel Weisz). Of course, Bloom and Penelope fall in love.
It's a lively, stylish caper, and one of Brody's lighter roles - which is not to suggest that he took the role lightly, as he delved into the psyche of his character. "I guess early on when they found their way as con men - con boys - he found great comfort in stepping into the shoes of a character, and did this so wholeheartedly that he didn't really find himself. This is the awakening. The movie kicks in at a point where he feels very lost, and it's an interesting thing, because a lot of young, or maybe not so young, men and women wake up one day and they perhaps feel that they aren't what they either had hoped to be or don't relate to certain things, and he's trying to find something real, and his world, although incredibly rich and interesting, lacked truth."
His character may be fictional, but he could be describing the feelings of many an actor. So how has Brody managed, since winning his Oscar and finding greater fame, to ensure that his own life - and his roles - do not lack truth? "I have always been concerned about [keeping in touch with real life], and I was very concerned with that when, for instance, I won the Academy Award and life changed dramatically for me. That transition was beyond anything I could imagine, and not something I'd necessarily considered or could conceive. And it was a big concern to me because so much of what I've been able to convey is from my experiences in real life, as well, interacting with people on subways... And your interactions change somewhat with a certain level of fame or recognition. I think the beauty of it is that I know both sides of it, I also know a great deal about how a lot of what is perceived to be truth is not necessarily the truth, and I'm grateful for that."
Nevertheless, for a method man (he famously lost 13.6kg and dumped the trappings of his life before filming The Pianist, in an attempt to understand the horror of his character's predicament), the isolation of fame must make character research difficult. "I don't feel isolated actually; I feel it's made the world much smaller for me," he says slowly, cupping his hands into a tiny sphere. "Obviously people react differently but once you get past that initial thing people revert to a very normal way of behaving, and as long as I'm not the one that creates that then I will maintain a sense of normalcy. If I lose my head and start to believe that I'm more important, we're in trouble," he laughs. "But it'll never happen. I can't allow that to happen. I worked very long and hard before I received that level of success, and the joy that I found has come from the work, not from [the fame] and I know very much how to differentiate."
Perhaps one reason his reputation among interviewers is that of a wary subject is his almost painfully slow delivery. Words come in groups of three or four, interspersed with long, long pauses, as he seeks out exactly the right phrase. The chit chat passes easily enough - tales of him wandering around Carrefour in search of a phone card ("No, no one there recognised me; I guess the beard helped. But I got a sense of the people..."), his definition of his beard as "a work in progress", his brief discussion of the festival programme. An exchange with Banderas as he walks past is positively rapid-fire (Banderas: "Did you go to Dubai?" Brody: "I didn't go yet." Banderas: "Aaah, you're going to flip out. It's like going in the future 200 years. Mind-blowing.")
But once his mind is fully engaged by a question, he wrestles with his thoughts, straining those mournful eyebrows, his earnest brown-green eyes searching the room for inspiration. "I'm sorry, I'm very long-winded," he says at one point, as he continues to elaborate on the sentence that was interrupted by his discussion with Banderas. And the patient listener is rewarded with a series of thoughtful insights into the psychology and methods of a man who has acted since childhood.
"I was always an actor, I think, in the sense that I was very imaginative as a boy, and I was mischievous," he explains. "I think... I don't know... I liked all the elements that go into it, including a fascination with human... idiosyncrasies... and the qualities that make us... unique. Growing up in a city like New York, being the subject of a photographer mother" - he nods affectionately towards his mother, the Hungarian-born photographer Sylvia Plachy, who has accompanied him to Abu Dhabi - "all of those things helped."
When asked about his reputation for being a method actor, he expresses some conflict. "It's not an insult; it's definitely positive. Certain roles require more dedication than others and that dedication varies, but I've found that even things that I assume to be simpler are not really simple once you delve into them. Things that first appear to be fun and easy, like the role in King Kong, for instance, are much harder because you have to find the truth in a moment-to-moment basis, and that is difficult. You have to dissect the character and dissect your own... You have to be not only aware of your emotional state but able to invoke a state that you don't really feel, and that's not only challenging, it's very difficult to consistently connect to, so to speak: even connecting once, but let alone 15 takes if the director requires that.
"I mean, say you wake up and you're tired and you had a rough night and there are your own personal things that you're dealing with and you're supposed to be elated. I do find the process just as difficult as it is incredibly rewarding and insightful. But it's more of a sense of trying to understand the individual I'm playing and be sincere with that, because if it feels false to me, I can't expect you to believe it."
Perhaps that is what makes Brody's performances at once so compelling for the audience and so difficult for him. Where so many leading actors, having established their screen personas, continue to successfully play versions of themselves in different scenarios, he has made a conscious decision to avoid this trap. "My first film after [The Pianist] was The Village, and it was the antithesis of what everyone was telling me to do. But it was challenging and risky, and it was not a lead role. It was a character that was interesting and it frightened me. I figured why not do that and not become paralysed because of what everyone says I should do, and just stick to what has motivated me all these years, which is working with an interesting director on material that will provide some sense of growth and is different from something I've done in the past."
It was a typically contrary decision: is he a character actor or a leading man? A brooding artist or a joker? The man who ditched his former girlfriend to feel the pain of his character in The Pianist or the loving boyfriend to the beautiful Spanish actress Elsa Pataky? Who Brody is and who he will be next time we see him will, frustratingly for those who love to typecast, continue to remain something of a mystery.
gchamp@thenational.ae
