Adrien Brody details shocking weight loss due to PTSD and eating disorder from filming The Pianist’

nypost.com:

“The Pianist,” owing to the dramatic weight loss he undertook for the film.The star, who won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Holocaust survivor Władysław Szpilman in the Roman Polanski movie, spoke about the experience making the biopic during a new interview with New York Magazine.

Brody, 51, said he went on a near-starvation diet so he could lose 30 pounds for the role. When it finally came time to step onto set for the first time, the strict regimen left him weighing only 129 pounds.

The star “was barely drinking water by the time they started filming,” according to the profile. “That was a physical transformation that was necessary for storytelling,” Brody said, looking back. “But then that kind of opened me up, spiritually, to a depth of understanding of emptiness and hunger in a way that I didn’t know, ever.”Asked if he has PTSD from making the film, the actor replied, “I do, yeah.”“I definitely had an eating disorder for at least a year,” he shared. “And then I was depressed for a year, if not a lifetime.

I’m kidding, I’m kidding.”Brody has gone to extreme lengths acting in other films throughout his career. Filming 2005’s “The Jacket,” a science-fiction thriller that follows a Gulf War veteran who’s wrongly sent to a mental institution, he told director John Maybury to leave him in a straitjacket his character wears so he could “get a feel for it,” per New York Magazine.