The role Adrien Brody regrets turning down
After appearing in the likes of Bullet with Tupac and Mickey Rourke, Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam and Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, Adrien Brody lit up the cinema world with his fantastic performance in Roman Polanski’s 2002 Second World War movie The Pianist.
Brody rightfully for the Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’ after losing 14 kilograms, learning to play Chopin on the piano and truly dedicating himself to the role. From there, the world was Brody’s oyster, and he continued to deliver excellent acting performances in the likes of The Darjeeling Limited, Midnight in Paris and even BBC’s Peaky Blinders.
However, despite all the excellent roles that Brody has delivered throughout his career, it looks as though he still harbours some regrets about one particular job that he turned down. After all, it’s the things you don’t do that sometimes are the most thought about and remembered, and for Brody, that’s no different.
When Peter Jackson’s first film in his The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, rolled around in 2001, it laid the precedent for becoming the most significant fantasy film franchise of all time, still admired in great numbers to this down. But Brody foolishly turned down the opportunity to get involved in the action.
In an interview with GQ, the actor looked back at some of his best roles and talked about performing for Peter Jackson in 2005’s King Kong. He noted: “I remember going to see Lord Of The Rings in the theatre with an ex-girlfriend. And she turned to me and said, ‘You passed on Lord Of The Rings?!’”
“I remember feeling so stupid,” Brody continued. “But I don’t think I would have gotten the role of Jack in Peter’s [King Kong]. I don’t think that would have translated.” As the actor admits, it’s unlikely that Jackson would have wanted to cast Brody in two of his movies of the early-to-mid 2000s, so perhaps missing out on Lord of the Rings was the right decision.
King Kong saw Brody perform in one of his most memorable film appearances. However, on the other hand, the actor himself clearly seems to regret letting the likes of Viggo Mortensen, Orlando Bloom, and Elijah Wood have all the fun in Middle Earth without him. Brody also admits that he was unsure as to what his role might have been in the fantasy epics.
“I, somehow, didn’t grasp it,” he said. “I don’t know what part I would have been right for, but it was some Hobbit-like character. I was looking for something else.” After all, Brody is a generous 6’1, so it’s highly unlikely that we’d have ever seen him as a dwarf or a hobbit. An elf, on the other hand…
