Adrien Brody, playing Lazslo Toth, the brilliant architect and troubled Holocaust survivor at the heart of The Brutalist, won his second Best Actor Oscar.
Brody had won his first Best Actor in 2003 for his lead performance in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist. At age 29, he became the youngest Best Actor winner in the Academy’s history, a record he still holds.
His competitor, Timothee Chalamet would would broken this age record had he won this year.
By winning, Brody also broke another tradition: Charlton Heston had set the record 65 years ago with his Oscar-winning turn as Judah Ben-Hur, in Wiliam Wyler’s epic, Ben-Hur, in which he was on-screen for 121.
The longest screentime record for a Best Actor nominee is held by Denzel Washington, who was on-screen for 141 minutes in Spike Lee’s 1992 biopic, Malcolm X.
But Brody’s performance edges out Anthony Hopkins (Nixon), who had 124 minutes of screen time, for fourth place all-time.
