10 Secret Acting Methods You Never Knew

3. Adrien Brody Went "Emotionally Method" For The Pianist

Method acting is hardly a secret acting technique, though the vast majority of the time it pertains to actors becoming the physical embodiment of their character, be it attaining a certain weight, keeping an accent, doing the actor's real-life job (such as Robert De Niro become a cabbie for Taxi Driver), or asking that the cast and crew refer to them by their character's name during shooting.

Or if you're Daniel Day-Lewis, you basically do all of these things.

But Adrien Brody took method acting in a slightly different direction when preparing to play Polish Jew Władysław Szpilman in Roman Polanski's The Pianist, for which Brody and Polanski both won Oscars.

Brody shed 30 pounds of weight to more convincingly resemble his impoverished character, though went the extra mile of doing a number of things to place himself in the precise emotional head-state that Szpilman himself was in during the real-life events.

Brody sold almost all of his possessions, including his phone, car, and apartment, broke up with his girlfriend, and shut himself away from the world, all in the hope of giving an emotionally authentic performance.

In the actor's own words, "I did all these things to encourage loneliness and to encourage loss...It taught me to appreciate everything and everyone that’s important to me in my life."

The Oscar probably didn't hurt, either.