Adrien Brody Lived in Isolation in a Hotel for Five Months

Adrien Brody spent nearly five months in almost total isolation in a New York hotel room. He decided to sequester himself to prepare for his Broadway debut in The Fear of 13, a play based on the true story of Nick Yarris, a man who spent 22 years on death row for a murder he did not commit.

“It is lonesome, of course,” the actor told Interview Magazine. “But I’m playing a man who has lived far deeper in that isolation. What I experience is only scratching the surface.” Nick Yarris, the character he played, spent his time reading compulsively and writing. He also fell in love with and married a prison justice advocate. Brody worked to replicate Yarris’s experience from the hotel. “I basically have to hole up here on my own, away from family and away from my loved ones in order to do this work. Most of my downtime is trying to decompress and rest up to be ready to work. To be in a space to do the work properly and be prepared requires isolation.”

Brody is known for going to extremes to embody his characters. Before he began filming his Oscar-winning role in Roman Polanski’s 2002 film The Pianist, he left his apartment to move to Europe, learned to play the piano, and lost so much weight that he put his health at risk.

Working on the Broadway show, which closed on June 28, was an all-consuming experience, with rehearsals lasting 11 hours a day, six days a week. He had no time left to “really decompress,” he said, and as a result, he changed many of his “personal habits.” “It comes and goes in an actor’s life when you have certain roles that require a great deal of commitment, and they’re all-consuming, especially through rehearsals, tech, previews. ”