5. Adrien Brody - The Jacket
For his Oscar-winning role in The Pianist, Adrien Brody sold all his worldly possessions, including his New York apartment, car and phone. The reason behind this extreme life choice? It helped Brody understand how it felt when Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman lost everything to the Nazi regime. Luckily, The Pianist was hugely successful, but not every movie can be a hit. Brody went to similar extremes for his role in the little seen sci-fi film The Jacket. In the movie, Brody plays a soldier who is imprisoned in an asylum and forced to wear a straitjacket while locked for hours in morgue-like metal drawers. Such an experience would be difficult for many people, but Brody decided that just filming his scenes in the creepy drawers was not enough. In between takes, the mad b*stard instructed director John Maybury to leave him locked in the darkness, sometimes for hours at a time. It's a shame then that The Jacket bombed both critically and commercially. At least Brody won't freak out too much if he's ever accidentally pronounced dead and locked up in a morgue. Silver linings people!