Adrien Brody: Wears "The Jacket"

Poor tall, dark and cute actor Adrien Brody. First he was hunted by Nazis as a WW II Polish Jew in The Pianist, for which he became the youngest man ever to win the Best Actor Oscar, then he was shipped down to New Zealand to run from a very, very big monkey in Peter Jackson's King Kong. Somewhere in the middle, he shot a cool psychological thriller called The Jacket, in which he co-stars with Keira Knightley and plays a Gulf War soldier with amnesia, framed for a murder and sent to a mental institution where he's placed in a straightjacket in a morgue drawer! Geez, Adrien, lighten up! Actually, the actor, in person, is very positive, witty, funny and upbeat. Witness the 2004 Oscar telecast during which he planted a super big smooch on winner Halle Berry!

We got to have a sitdown with Adrien at the 4 Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills earlier this week. We were impressed with how very young the actor looked in tousled hair, dark pinstripe suit, light blue shirt and interesting bling; a diamond encrusted skull and crossbones necklace! (Humm, is Keira passing out pirate treasure to her co-stars now?). We got the latest on Adrien's preparation for The Jacket and his take on working with a giant, invisible monkey in "Kong"!

TeenHollywood: You are locked in a morgue drawer in a straightjacket for some of this film. What kind of preparation do you do for something like that?

Adrien: Uh, I grew up living in New York in an apartment there, and it was pretty small. But, I actually found a sensory deprivation chamber where we were shooting in Glasgow. They are these tanks where you lay in a thin saline solution. It was really an interesting experience. I would do quadruple sessions that they were pretty amazed that I could endure, and then you become very aware of how your mind works and how cyclical thoughts are and how you can guide them. It's an interesting way to meditate but also to separate yourself from your physical being. I did it a number of times, but it was hours on end. I got the production company to pay for it. I said, 'if I'm going to subject myself to this, you're going to foot the bill.' It's not expensive. I don't think it was more than a few hundred dollars to do.

TeenHollywood: How would you describe The Jacket? John (Maybury, the director) said it was a dream your character has before dying but I didn't see it that way at all.

Adrien: Well, that's up to you (each audience member). It's pretty amazing to go to a movie and not be spoon fed. You don't want to be fed everything. I like the ambiguity of it, because like in life, things are ambiguous, and people are ambiguous. That's part of what attracted me to this role was the fact that the character is not really defined by any of this. His ethnicity, his religious beliefs, where he's from, on any level that's not described, nor does he have any allegiance to his own past, which defines us, how we are raised and how we are told who we are and what we are. And I think it's a remarkable place to be as an actor. That's a very exciting concept to explore in depth. In Hollywood, that's hard to obtain, with everyone telling you what you are.

TeenHollywood: So do you have your own idea of what is really happening to your character?

Adrien: I have my own ideas of what it's about, but I also have to suspend that too when I'm doing it. My process is that I have to kind of believe everything my character is believing while he's believing it or enduring it or experiencing it. My character is going mad whether I'm dead or I'm dreaming or whatever, I'm going mad in that moment, and I have to experience that as part of my reality.

TeenHollywood: That's pretty intense. What kind of shooting conditions did you face in the morgue drawer or in the hospital?

Adrien: Well, we shot in a mental institution in the basement. They built the set in the basement of a mental institution and it had that vibe. We were using real gurneys and they were stacked with professional instruments that were frightening, and the crew was nice, but the state of mind I was in was not. I don't even try to communicate with anyone when I'm working. I was restrained in the jacket, and I would often ask to be left alone on the gurney and wait while they set up the next shot instead of them getting me out of it and sitting around and having a conversation.

TeenHollywood: Wasn't that really hard?

Adrien: I think it's just important to stay centered. If we were shooting it anywhere, I would be in the same kind of my own space, so I kind of am oblivious to what's going on for the most part while I'm filming. When I'm done, it's cool, 'have a good night everyone.'

TeenHollywood: The look of the place was pretty depressing.

Adrien: I think Peter Deming is a phenomenal D.P. (Director of Photography) and the production designer is great. On all levels, it was a very creative environment, including the process that they used to edit the film and do the effects. It was very organic and very much like crafting something. They were crushing moth wings and blood on negatives and blood on my outfit and coffee stains and hopefully not urine, but things that were very reminiscent of urine, and it had a real artist's feel to everything, which is wonderful. So it was cool. It was pretty inspirational.

TeenHollywood: How many hours would you spend in that jacket?

Adrien: It depends. I mean, I'm sure we did lots of days with lots of overtime but nothing will be more difficult than The Pianist because it had like a six week slot with no other actors and it was a tremendous amount of pressure. It was all day with (director) Roman (Polanski) and myself and a crew. It was relentless, and Roman never even liked using the stand-in, so I was there from morning to night on set doing everything. It's made everything else kind of easier in a way. But, this one was difficult. There were long days of being restrained on a metal gurney in a cold, damp Scottish prison.

TeenHollywood: How does that compare to playing a role in King Kong?

Adrien: King Kong is really wonderful because it's, for me, a chance to not subject myself to the emotional torment, but now (shooting) I am physically abused. I'm spending eleven hours on a harness shooting stunts and you're doing these things where you can't put somebody else in there. I'm learning another aspect of filmmaking, which is very exciting and physical pain is easier to deal with.

TeenHollywood: How tough is it to imagine a giant monkey?

Adrien: That's the real challenge. Well, It's interesting. I mean, there is on one level, the challenge of having to experience things that don't exist, but that's also similar to what I'm doing having an out-of-body reaction in there in a drawer (in "Jacket"). I do have a very vivid imagination. That's part of what drew me to being an actor. You take it seriously and it's not a joke and it's not like, 'oh my God, there's that monkey again!' It's like what do you do when there is a 25 foot creature that sees you and senses you and smells you and doesn't like you from (his experiences with you) before.

TeenHollywood: Yikes! What do you do?

Adrien: What do you do? You smile or you run, and that's the only choice, and you run for your life, and you run many times on many different colored green and blue treadmills and do the best you can to believe. But look, the beauty of it is that the film is character driven, including the depth that's going into the creation of Kong, so it is going to be in my opinion the best combination of elements because it's going to have Peter (Jackson's) unbelievable team for effects but also his own creative vision for something he's been so passionate about since he was ten. It's very much similar to an independent movie even though it's probably costing Universal a fortune. It's a very similar process.

TeenHollywood: What was it like working with Keira on The Jacket?

Adrien: (big grin) She's nice, she's lovely.

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Lynn Barker is a Hollywood-based entertainment journalist and produced screenwriter.