Adrien Brody is back with 'The Brutalist.' This time, he's left the 'torment' behind.

NEW YORK − At 29, Adrien Brody became the youngest man ever to win the best actor Oscar for the 2002 Holocaust drama “The Pianist.”

More than two decades later, he could very well clinch his second gold statue for “The Brutalist” (in select theaters now, expanding nationwide Jan. 17), playing a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant in Brady Corbet’s 3 ½-hour epic. The character, a battered architect named László Tóth, is immensely personal to Brody, 51, whose father is Polish Jewish and mother is Hungarian. As a girl, she fled Budapest with her parents during the Hungarian Revolution, settling in New York in 1958.

“Nothing really feels fictional about this film, even though it is a fictional story,” says Brody, sipping tea on a rainy December afternoon. “It’s inside me; it’s deeply rooted in truth. Just last night, my mom sent me a whole slew of images: some from ‘The Pianist,’ some from my grandfather, some with my father holding me as a boy. It’s all there: all the lives that I’ve lived and chapters in my life.”

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Adrien Brody recalls 'painful' experience of making 'The Pianist'

“Brutalist” spans several decades, beginning as László lands in Pennsylvania after World War II, where he shovels coal and bunks in his cousin’s storage closet. Once a celebrated architect in his native Hungary, he’s eventually scooped up by a wealthy industrialist (Guy Pearce), who commissions László to design and build an exorbitant community center. But even as he and his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) attempt to forge a new life, they are constantly exploited and reminded they are “other.”

Brody was struck by the “complexity” and “nuance” of Corbet’s script, which he co-wrote with his partner, filmmaker Mona Fastvold.

“It’s unfortunately taken me decades to find something like this,” Brody says. “It’s such an ambitious thing. But also, it instantly tapped into my mother and grandparents’ struggle of coming to America. Even in spite of assimilating and becoming Americans, you’re still a foreigner.”

For Corbet, casting Brody was “very clear because of his family history,” the director says. What’s more, “he just felt so incredibly emotionally available; so graceful and so pained. I mean, he really just wore his heart on his sleeve.”

With his angular features and searching eyes, Brody has been a distinctive screen presence since his movie debut in 1989’s “New York Stories.” He worked with film giants Spike Lee (“Summer of Sam”) and Terrence Malick (“The Thin Red Line”) throughout the '90s, before landing the role of real-life composer Władysław Szpilman in Roman Polanski’s “Pianist.”

Given the “enormity” of Szpilman’s suffering during the Holocaust, the New York native felt an overwhelming responsibility to get it right. He lost 31 pounds to play the emaciated musician and isolated himself from family and friends during the shooting.

“It was very painful, but I’m unafraid to sacrifice for my work,” Brody recalls. “I really gave everything I could, but it was a lot to come out of: There were physiological repercussions of that starvation diet that lingered and were very hard to contend with. I gave up my place to live. I wasn’t living with my girlfriend anymore. I sold my car. Everything was in storage. I didn’t even have a phone number! I really went to a lot of extremes at that time.”

The movie was also an “emotional awakening” for the young actor, whose eyes were opened to “tremendous loss” and “the power of the human spirit to endure.” He fell into a yearlong depression after filming, coming home to New York just weeks before the 9/11 attacks.

“All of that fed into the darker state of mind,” Brody says. “It wasn’t just about the work – it was about what I discovered in the process.”

Adrien Brody didn't have 'the same level of torment' making 'The Brutalist'

Brody has since learned to take a healthier approach to his characters. Given the ancestral connection he already felt to László, his primary task for "Brutalist" was mastering a Hungarian dialect.

“It took many years of trial and error, but with this film, I didn’t go home with the same level of torment,” Brody says. “Brady is also just a pleasure to discuss things with, and it felt very nurturing.”

Nevertheless, he has empathy for Method actors: “I’ve worked with lots of people who other people have found insufferable, but I’ve gotten on very well with them,” Brody says with a grin. “I don’t take an outburst too personally. I respect the artist’s mind and that yearning inside of them. If you’re that immersed in things, you can’t carry yourself in an optimal way with every aspect.”

Watching “Brutalist” was “both challenging and moving” for Brody’s parents, who joined him at Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards, where he picked up best actor in a drama. (The actor also earned a nod from the Screen Actors Guild Awards Wednesday.) As he heads into Oscar season, he feels a renewed sense of purpose and “hope for the future”: Brody has worked steadily these last 20 years, appearing in multiple Wes Anderson movies as well as HBO's "Succession." Even still, he’s often felt that Hollywood didn’t know where exactly to place him.

“It’s frustrating at times, but that’s why people create works because they’re not given those opportunities,” says Brody, who’s returned to his first love – painting – in recent years. He has a home studio in upstate New York, where he lives with his girlfriend, fashion designer Georgina Chapman.

“Painting resurfacing in my life provided a degree of creative autonomy that actors don’t have,” Brody says. “It gave me a sense of control and an ability to step back. The beauty of this film is that it hopefully reminds a lot of people of what I have been striving to bring to the table. It’s what actors constantly must do: be relevant, and remind filmmakers and producers that you are an asset.”

Now, “I feel like I can focus on what’s moving me and who I want to go on the next journey with,” Brody adds. “That’s a really good place to be for anybody pursuing artistic work. It’s usually a lot of near-fulfillment or catastrophic disappointment. (Laughs.) It’s not currently, so I’m grateful for that.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Brutalist' star Adrien Brody won't go to extremes after 'Pianist'