Houdini
adrien brody is perfectly miscast to play hungarian-born magician harry houdini in the miniseries houdini (2014). he is 1.85m tall to houdini’s 1.68m. he’s gangly where the real houdini was stocky. and there’s that famous nose, which adrien’s broken three times so far. but houdini was his hero when the actor studied magic as a child and he claims that “i spent a lifetime poring over magic books and loving magicians”. he even performed under the name the amazing adrien. amazingly… adrien’s mom is photographer sylvia plachy, who escaped from budapest, hungary as a child during the 1956 civil revolution against russia. adrien grew up in new york and the 41-year-old studied at laguardia high school of performance arts, graduating in 1991. he says that “i feel like my real acting training came from going to and from school on four different trains each way, because of how many human beings i’ve encountered”. aside from magic, a young adrien’s hobbies included drag racing. “i had many muscle cars. i rebuilt them on my own for very little money. i’d buy them and sell them, try to put that money into the next one,” he says. he remains the youngest performer ever to have won an oscar for best actor, for playing władysław szpilman in the pianist in 2002 at the age of 29. as an illusionist, adrien knew the magician rule about never revealing how tricks are performed, but the miniseries exposes a lot of technical detail. “sure, i feel a responsibility also being a magician at one point that i have an oath to abide by and i’m not so sure houdini, who i’ve been asked to represent, would necessarily want secrets to his illusions to be revealed. but i can understand the curiosity,” he admits.