Adrien Brody joins the perfect 2-for-2 Oscar club with Best Actor win for ‘The Brutalist’
Adrien Brody took home his second Oscar on Sunday — Best Actor for The Brutalist — putting him in rarefied air: He is the eighth performer to boast a perfect 2-for-2 record at the Oscars.
The first seven to achieve this are:
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1. Luise Rainer: Best Actress for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and The Good Earth (1937)
2. Vivien Leigh: Best Actress for Gone with the Wind (1939) and A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
3. Helen Hayes: Best Actress for The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1932) and Best Supporting Actress for Airport (1970)
4. Kevin Spacey: Best Supporting Actor for The Usual Suspects (1995) and Best Actor for American Beauty (1999)
5. Hilary Swank: Best Actress for Boys Don’t Cry (1999) and Million Dollar Baby (2004)
6. Christoph Waltz: Best Supporting Actor for Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Django Unchained (2012)
7. Mahershala Ali: Best Supporting Actor for Moonlight (2016) and Green Book (2018)
SEE The complete list of Oscar winners
Brody nabbed his first Best Actor Oscar for 2002's The Pianist to become the youngest winner in the category at 29. His double Best Actor wins make him the first person in this club with that combo. The 22-year gap between his victories is the second biggest after the 38 years between Hayes' Oscar bookends.
This group once had two other members. Jason Robards scored back-to-back Best Supporting Actor trophies for 1976's All the President’s Men and 1977's Julia, but he lost the same award for Melvin and Howard three years later to Timothy Hutton (Ordinary People). Sally Field had a longer stay in the club after winning Best Actress for 1979's Norma Rae and 1984's Places in the Heart. She received her third nomination 28 years later in Best Supporting Actress for Lincoln but lost to Anne Hathaway (Les Misérables). Waltz joined the club that same night.
No one currently owns a perfect 3-for-3 record. Walter Brennan did have it for one year. He won Best Supporting Actor for 1936's Come and Get It, 1938's Kentucky, and 1940's The Westerner before losing on his fourth nomination in the category for 1941's Sergeant York to Donald Crisp (How Green Was My Valley).
Brody is also now the 10th man to win two Best Actor Oscars following Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Marlon Brando, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Hanks, Jack Nicholson, Sean Penn, and Anthony Hopkins. Daniel Day-Lewis holds the record with three wins.
After The Brutalist's premiere at the Venice International Film Festival, Brody became the Oscar frontrunner for his turn as László Tóth, a Holocaust survivor and architect trying to start anew in America. He nearly swept the televised precursors, claiming the Golden Globe, Critics Choice, and BAFTA. He only lost the Screen Actors Guild Award to Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown), who was second behind Brody in the Oscar odds and ahead of Ralph Fiennes (Conclave), Colman Domingo (Sing Sing), and Sebastian Stan (The Apprentice). In contrast, he did not win any precursor before his Oscar upset for The Pianist.
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