Adrien Brody's Second Oscar Triumph: A Masterclass in Aging's Wisdom

Adrien Brody protested when music interrupted his emotional acceptance speech for best actor in The Brutalist at the Oscars on March 2 — meaning he should stop talking and leave the stage. “Please turn the music off! I’ve done this before — it’s not my first rodeo. I will be brief.”

He wasn’t brief, but he was right — at 51, it’s his second Oscar rodeo. In 2003 when he was 29, he became the youngest-ever best-actor winner for The Pianist. Since he beat A Complete Unknown’s Timothee Chalamet, 29, for the 2025 Oscar, Brody still holds that record. But he’s more reflective than the youngster he was back then. “The one thing I've gained, having the privilege to come back here, is to have some perspective,” he told the Oscars audience. “No matter what you've accomplished, it can all go away. And I think what makes this night the most special is the awareness of that, and the gratitude that I have to still do the work that I love.”

When he accepted his 2003 Oscar, he surprised viewers by planting a big impromptu kiss on his startled award presenter, Halle Berry. On the 2025 red carpet, she ambush-smooched him. “I’ve been dying to pay him back for 22 years,” said Berry, 58. Both Brody and his partner, Georgina Chapman, 48, laughed at her stunt. Instead of being the brash young perpetrator of a prank, he was a grownup who could take a (well-deserved) joke.

In 2003, Adrien Brody was just 29 when he won the best-actor Oscar for "The Pianist." He shared top acting honors that year with Nicole Kidman, who won best actress for "The Hours."

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Yet there’s a continuity with his talented 2003 self. On Feb. 23, while accepting AARP’s Movies for Grownups Award for best actor — an honor regarded as a precursor award that affects an actor’s odds for a subsequent Oscar — Brody said, “I've been doing this for almost 40 years, and I still have the same childlike enthusiasm that I've always had. We should all remember that no matter how old we get, we have to keep that freedom and imagination and curiosity in one another.”

He’s also been rather an old soul since he was a kid, which may have helped deepen his haunting portraits of Holocaust survivors in both The Pianist and The Brutalist. He credited his elders, who also made him a regular reader of AARP The Magazine from childhood on. “My grandparents and my parents afforded me this moment. And they treated me as a grownup. They treated me with respect. They gave me space to forge a creative path without judgment.”​