Adrien Brody admits that he wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around while making Predators, the latest in the major science-fiction franchise.
“I was living a very kind of austere life when I was making this film,” he explains. “I had no sugar, no alcohol. I was not having sex, I was in the jungle alone for the most part when we were in Hawaii. And that will make you ferocious. I was training six days a week and lifting very heavy weights, which increases your body’s testosterone output.”
All that preparation was necessary to transform the normally slender Oscar-winner into Royce, an intimidating mercenary and survivalist dropped onto an alien planet to be hunted for sport by the series’ namesake creatures. All the bulking up, as well as the conditions of the set, helped get Brody into the right mindset.
“There’s a certain degree of emotional transformation that happens when you physically alter yourself. You find yourself very adrenalized,” he says. “You are running through a wall of fire and you are wielding an axe-like hammer, and you are interacting with seven-foot-tall monsters. And they hurt when you hit them. I still have scars.”
Since winning an Oscar in 2003 for The Pianist, Brody has cut an eclectic path as an actor, going from blockbusters like King Kong to indie fare like The Brothers Bloom.
“I’m always open to new challenges. That’s part of what inspires me.”
Predator history
- First introduced nearly 25 years ago as the fearsome foe hunting Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Predator aliens have become a fixture of pop culture, spawning novels, comic books, video games and several movies.
- The movies including 1990’s Predator 2, 2004’s Alien vs. Predator and 2007’s Alien vs. Predator: Requiem.
- But in making the new Predators, producer Robert Rodriguez wasn’t concerned with the recent turns the franchise had taken. “The bar was so low at that point,” he tells Metro. Rodriguez focused instead on the 1987 original. “I didn’t even see those two, actually,” he admits of the crossover films. “I just pretend I … was making a sequel to the first one.”
