‘I’ve Had A Lifetime Of Preparation’ 

A huge festival hit that has firmly placed itself in the running for some gongs at the 2025 Academy Awards, The Brutalist is the audacious fresh epic from Vox Lux director Brady Corbet. It stars Adrien Brody as László Tóth, a Jewish Hungarian architect who moves to the US in search of a fresh life far away from the war-torn Europe of the 1940s. Ending up in Pennsylvania, he is commissioned by millionaire Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) to design a community centre – but Tóth’s American Dream starts to crumble as the forces of corruption and capitalism come into play.

It’s a story that’s close to Brody’s heart, given that his family also fled Hungary for America, back in the 1950s. “I’ve had a lifetime of preparation for this role,” he tells Empire, in our world-exclusive fresh issue. “I’ve yearned to have a role of this complexity, that speaks to so many things that are personal to me. I come from very humble beginnings. I’ve never taken that for granted. I wish my grandparents were able to have seen some of my trajectory. Their struggles have informed so much of my own process.”

Fast-forward a few decades, and Brody’s parents got to visit the actor on set of The Brutalist in Budapest. “I mean, my mom has seen it all,” he says. “But I think visiting this set and seeing this film was particularly meaningful.” That connection with Hungary also went a long way in helping Brody get to grips with Tóth’s accent, with him drawing on some familial memories to do so. “I very much remember my grandparents’ dialect,” he explains. “We worked with a wonderful dialect coach and found a voice of that era that was very reminiscent of my grandfather’s tonality and cadence. Shooting in Budapest, I also had a responsibility to not sound like a fool in front of my crew.” Now that would have been pretty brutal.

Read our full The Brutalist feature — speaking to Adrien Brody, Brady Corbet, Felicity Jones and more — in Empire‘s February 2025 issue, on sale Thursday 19 December. Pre-order a copy online here. The Brutalist hits UK cinemas on 24 January.