10 Breakout Movie Performances That Ultimately Went Nowhere

The Big Break:

An indie actor who had received some positive notices amongst talented ensembles in the late 90s movies The Thin Red Line and Summer Of Sam, Adrien Brody burst out as a leading man with a powerhouse performance as real-life classical composer and holocaust survivor Władysław Szpilman in The Pianist.

Beating seasoned pros like Daniel Day-Lewis, Jack Nicholson, Michael Caine and Nicolas Cage, Brody at the age of 29 became the youngest ever Best Actor Oscar winner, leaving him much in demand.

Peter Jackson wanted him as the male lead in King Kong and there were rumours attaching him to such major roles as the Joker in Christopher Nolan's reimagined Batman series and Spock in the Star Trek reboot.

But Then:

King Kong was a relative success, albeit not quite on the Lord Of The Rings scale, but, even reconfigured as a Eugene O'Neill-type playwright, male lead Jack Driscoll (Brody's part) remains as much of a forgettable third wheel to the central Kong-Ann Darrow dynamic as ever. Meanwhile, neither Batman nor Star Trek rumour worked out.

In the immediate aftermath of The Pianist he did get to work with some of the most highly rated directors of the mid-2000s: Wes Anderson, Rian Johnson and M. Night Shyamalan. But The Darjeeling Limited, The Brothers Bloom and The Village are not remembered amongst any of their better works.

Less than a decade after his youthful Oscar glory, Brody was left with little more than suing the producers of Dario Argento's career nadir Giallo for his unpaid salary. These are the movies Brody has made in the past five years - Dragon Blade, Backtrack, Septembers Of Shiraz, Manhattan Night, Bullet Head, and Air Strike - have you heard of any of them?