Adrien Brody has won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his leading role in The Brutalist, in which he plays fictional Jewish Hungarian architect László Tóth.
The award marks Brody's second Oscar win. He first won in 2003 for his performance as Wladyslaw Szpilman in The Pianist, a role that has garnered comparisons to Brody's work as Tóth. As critic Siddhant Adlakha writes in his Mashable review of The Brutalist, "There's not a single moment where [Brody] isn't reaching into the depths of his soul, mining some corner of either his previous roles (such as in The Pianist) or of his mother's experience as a Hungarian woman of Jewish descent forced to flee her country in the 1950s."
In addition to the Oscar, this awards season saw Brody taking home the BAFTA, the Critics Choice Award, and the Golden Globe. He beat out fellow Oscar nominees Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown), Colman Domingo (Sing Sing), Ralph Fiennes (Conclave), and Sebastian Stan (The Apprentice).
In his rambling, nearly six-minute long speech — during which he shut down the playoff music by saying it was "not my first rodeo" — Brody told viewers, "I'm here once again to represent the lingering traumas and the repercussions of war and systematic oppression and of antisemitism and racism and othering. I pray for a healthier and a happier and a more inclusive world."
