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Wladyslaw Szpilman - Adrien Brody
Almost from his debut performance as an orphan from New York City who finds a new life in Nebraska in the PBS period drama "Home at Last" (1988), Adrien Brody has garnered critical kudos and made audiences sit up and take notice. The lanky, angular-featured, dark-haired actor seemed to be poised on the verge of stardom after landing the coveted role of Corporal Fife, the authorial stand-in in Terrence Malick's highly-anticipated filming of James Jones' World War II novel "The Thin Red Line" (1998). Unfortunately, his part was edited down to little more than a cameo, an insult only compounded by the amount of advance press his starring role had received. Still, the young actor persevered, and made a name for himself with subsequent portrayals that showcased his talent and classically compelling screen presence.
Born and raised in New York City, Brody began acting at camp as a child but first found some notoriety as the subject of photographs taken by his mother, famed photographer Sylvia Plachy. He often credits Plachy for his acting career as her commission to shoot at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts led to Brody's enrollment in the school's young people's weekend program, where he quickly found his calling.
After making his professional acting debut in the off-Broadway play "Family Pride in the '50s", Brody acted in a handful of small film roles and played Mary Tyler Moore's stepson in the short-lived sitcom "Annie Maguire" (CBS, 1988) before hitting his stride as a delinquent who serves as a role model for a boy left alone by circumstance in "King of the Hill" (1993). Reviewers fell over themselves praising his lead performance as a gambler who gets in too deep in Eric Bross' "Nothing to Lose" when it premiered at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival. A tussle over the title led a delay in its release: now called "Ten Benny", it played theatrically in 1998. By that time, the busy actor had played Mickey Rourke's junkie brother in "Bullet" (1995), a computer whiz in "Solo" (1996) and a homosexual poet patterned after Allen Ginsberg in the independent "The Last Time I Committed Suicide" (also 1996). Reuniting with Bross, Brody received additional acclaim as an bartender/playwright in the midst of interracial romance, falling for Elise Neal after losing Lauryn Hill in "Restaurant" (1998).
After copping the disappointingly minor role in "The Thin Red Line", the actor recouped and confirmed his rising star status when Spike Lee tapped him to play a thoughtful and complex punk rocker suspected around the neighborhood of being the serial killer Son of Sam in the director's 1999 effort "Summer of Sam.” Brody also offered a display of his versatility with a remarkably unsettling turn as a murderous psychopath who buries alive a kidnap victim in the thriller "Oxygen" (aired on Cinemax in 1999 prior to a limited big-screen run). He next gave a fine starring performance as a young Jewish man who falls for an alluring Catholic girl (Carolyn Murphy) in Barry Levinson's semi-autobiographical "Liberty Heights,” a drama set amid social unrest in mid-50s Baltimore. The busy actor then had leading roles in Kenneth Loach's "Bread and Roses,” a fact-based chronicle of labor union struggles in California, and the war-torn Yugoslavia-set drama "Harrison's Flowers" (both lensed 1999). Brody was next seen as a European count opposite Hilary Swank in "The Affair of the Necklace" (2001) before appearing in the film that would provide him with a breakthrough role, director Roman Polanski's "The Pianist" (2002). As a brilliant pianist and Polish Jew who bears witness to Nazi atrocities (thanks to his musical talents) and desperately attempts to escape, Brody astounded audiences with the depth of his sensitive, melancholy performance and earned a wealth of critical plaudits as well as a leading role Oscar, catapulting him from mainstream obscurity into the upper echelons of actors.
Brody's small role in "The Singing Detective" (2003) was filmed pre-Oscar, so his next real post-win film was in writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's tension-filler thriller "The Village" (2003), playing Noah the village idiot, essentially, among a 19th Century-style community isolated from the outside world and subject to a pact with mysterious creatures living in the surrounding woods. Brody next starred in the thriller "The Jacket" (2005) as an amnesiac man convicted of murder and institutionalized who is straight-jacketed and shoved in a morgue drawer, where he sees a vision of the future that prompts him to free himself with the help of a woman he has yet to meet (Keira Knightley).
Brody next starred in the celebrity biopic-cum-crime noir, “Hollywoodland” (2006), playing Louis Simo, a private investigator who digs into the tawdry life and mysterious death of “Superman” actor George Reeves. The more Simo learns about Reeves’ complicated life, the more he learns about himself and his connection to the events. Meanwhile, Brody signed on another biopic, “Manolete” (lensed 2006), a look at the famed matador from 1940’s Spain and his love affair with actress Lupe Sino (Penelope Cruz). He also began filming the unusual biopic, “I’m Not There: Suppositions on a Film Concerning Dylan” (lensed 2006), a re-enactment of the life of Bob Dylan with multiple actors embodying different stages of the singer’s life.
Captain Wilm Hosenfeld - Thomas Kretschmann
Originally trained as an Olympic swimmer, German actor Thomas Kretschmann began his career in the theater as part of the Schiller Ensemble in Berlin. In 1989, he started working steadily in German-language theater productions, television, and film. He moved to Vienna, Austria, in 1991 and won the Max Ophül prize for Best Young Actor. He broke into international feature films with the German war drama Stalingrad and the Italian thriller The Stendhal Syndrome. At this point, he was developing a knack for playing authority figures and other tough guys in action-packed situations. In addition to his numerous other appearances in European films, he gained pivotal roles in Coppia Omicida, Tease, and the American film Total Reality. In 2000, Hollywood was introduced to Kretschmann with the submarine adventure U-571 and the action thriller Blade II. Though he relocated to Hollywood, he continued working in international features for the historical epic I cavalieri che fecero l'impresa as well as Roman Polanski's The Pianist. Other projects for 2004 included a starring role in the romance Head in the Clouds and a return to submarine action for In Enemy Hands.
Dorota - Emilia Fox
British actress Emilia Fox attended Oxford University to study her craft, before setting out to begin her professional acting career in the late '90s. She most notably played the title role in the play Katherine Howard at the Chichester Festival Theatre in 1998, and played Clara Copperfield in a TV movie production of David Copperfield. As the new millennium began, Fox had wracked up enough roles on her resumé that she was ready for more substantial parts in projects like the 2003 TV biopic Henry VIII, and the 2005 comedy Keeping Mum. In 2004, she began playing pathologist Nikki Alexander on the TV series Silent Witness, and she stayed with the show for seasons to come. In 2006, she also garnered much praise for her role in the independent dramedy Cashback