An Evening with ‘The Brutalist’ Stars Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce is Anything But Brutal
SBIFF Cinema Vanguard Award Honorees Share Their Experiences on That Film And a Look at Their Impressive and Varied Careers
Pete Hammond, Adrien Brody, and Guy Pearce at the 2025 SBIFF Cinema Vanguard Awards, February 13, 2025. | Photo: Ingrid Bostrom
“The Amazing Adrien the Magician” and “Junior Mr. Victoria the Bodybuilder” have come a long way since their early brushes with fame. Jointly awarded Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s Cinema Vanguard honors Thursday night at the Arlington, the careers of Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce — the stars of the Academy Award nominated Best Picture The Brutalist and both individual Oscar contenders — are on fire right now thanks to their involvement in Brady Corbet’s ambitious, three and a half hour epic period film.
It’s an admittedly uncommercial-sounding story, following a postwar Hungarian architect (Brody) as he deals with a demanding American patron (Pearce) and navigates his own complicated relationship with his equally compelling wife (Felicity Jones, who also got an Oscar nomination).
Reportedly shot in just 33 days, with a low budget of about $10 million (for comparison, the nearly three-hour, also Oscar-nominated Wicked Part 1 had a $145 million budget), both Brody and Pearce said that making The Brutalist really felt like they were working on a small, independent film, despite its ambitious scope.
