As the youngest person to ever win the Academy Award for Best Actor, Adrien Brody is one of the most respected young actors in Hollywood. After winning the Oscar at age 29 for starring in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist, Brody went on to star in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village. Currently, Brody stars in The Jacket.

In The Jacket, Brody plays Jack Starks, a tormented Gulf War veteran who is falsely accused of murder. Starks is sentenced to a mental institution, where part of his treatment includes being injected with medication, strapped in a straitjacket and shoved in a morgue-style drawer. While in the drawer, he is transported to the future where he learns he is going to die in four days.

Brody’s performance is the highlight of the film. Starks is a complicated and intricate character, which is what drew Brody to the picture.

“What I’ve done when choosing work is to try to find things that continually challenge me and explore different aspects of human nature -- either things I have experienced, or that I may not know about," the Oscar-winner states. "To me, Jack Starks is a clean slate. The role is about who the character is, not where he is from and what his heritage is. Starks is searching for his identity, but is not bound to his past.”

Brody also says, “Part of what attracted me to this role was the fact that the character is not really defined by his ethnicity, his religious beliefs; where he’s from, on any level, that’s not described. Nor does he have any allegiance to his own past which defines us; how we are raised and how we are told who we are, what we are. I think that it’s a remarkable place to be as an actor, or any point in life. It’s liberating, but at the same time: Who are you? And that’s a very exciting concept to explore in depth because it's all a way for us to assume we understand one another by how we perceive one another.”

Brody is known for using method acting techniques to get into the mindset of his characters. In addition to loosing 30 pounds for The Pianist, Brody also got rid of his apartment and car to help experience the sense of loss that victims of the Holocaust felt. He jokes about preparing for The Jacket, especially the scenes in which he is confined in a mortuary drawer.

“I grew up in New York, the apartments there are pretty small," he jokes. "No, I actually found a sensory deprivation chamber where we were shooting in Glasgow. It’s a tank where you lie in this dense saline solution. It was really an interesting experience... I would do quadruple sessions. You become very aware of how your mind works and how cyclical thoughts are and how you can guide them. It's an interesting way to meditate in a way, but also to separate yourself from your physical being.”

Brody explains, “Being in that drawer, in that deprivation chamber, you start feeling in that utter blackness of space that it’s a chance to let go of your own physical being.”

Brody also talks about how he worked on set to stay in the mindset of Jack Starks during the long shooting days. “I don’t try to communicate with anyone when I’m working. I was restrained in the jacket and I would often ask to be left alone on the gurney and wait while they set up the next shot instead of them getting me out of it and sitting around and having a conversation. I don’t think that’s conducive to staying in that state of mind. I think it's important to stay centered... I’m oblivious to what’s going on when I’m filming.”

Co-star Jennifer Jason Leigh comments on Brody’s ability to play such a cerebral and introverted character, despite his outgoing personality. “He’s great. He’s just a really really good actor. I think for someone that is so extroverted as a person, he has this incredible ability onscreen to project a kind of introverted presence -- someone that is living in the mind and is not able to communicate verbally... you really believe there is so much going on. It is really interesting. I think he can convey so much depth and soul. And in life, he’s such a prankster. He’s so funny and so incredibly extroverted, but onscreen he can completely switch it off, and what comes on is something very internal and exciting to watch and act with.”

Watching The Jacket, one would expect that the shoot was physically grueling for Brody. There are numerous scenes of Brody breaking down in the small drawer. However, he explains that it was not difficult compared with his experience working with Roman Polanski. “Nothing will be more difficult than The Pianist because we had a six-week slot with no other actors and it was a tremendous amount of pressure. It was all day with Roman and myself and the crew. It’s a whole movie that you could shoot in that time period. I learned more than I could have learned in any filmmaking class from that experience, but it’s made everything else easier in a way. I’m not saying that it wasn’t difficult. There were long days of being restrained on a metal gurney in a cold, damp, Scottish basement.”

The Jacket is open-ended and can be interpreted in several ways. Unlike the majority of films released by Hollywood studios, the film is ambiguous and requires the audience to think for themselves to understand the movie. The script’s ambiguity was a selling point for Brody. “It’s pretty amazing to go to a movie and not be spoon-fed. You don’t want to be fed everything. I like the ambiguity of it. Just like in life, things are ambiguous, people are ambiguous and people’s interpretations of people are ambiguous.”

When asked for his own explanation of the events of the film and how his interpretation affected the way he portrayed his character, Brody responds, “I have my own ideas of what it's all about, but I have to suspend that when I’m doing it, since my process is that I have to believe everything that my character is believing while he’s believing it or while he’s enduring or experiencing it. My character is going mad whether I’m dead or dreaming. I’m going mad in that moment, and I have to experience that as my reality.”

The film’s director, John Maybury, explains why The Jacket was a good fit for Brody. “This was an amazing opportunity for Adrien. In this film he gets to show a phenomenal range of characters. It's not just angst and beating himself up, there’s a levity. In his scenes with Daniel Craig’s character you can see a lightness in Adrien, a humor. And in the scenes with Keira [Knightley] you can see a beauty in the pair of them.”

Brody is currently filming his next movie with The Lord of the Rings' director Peter Jackson, King Kong. After working the psychologically demanding The Jacket, Brody explains the difference in working on an action film.

“King Kong is really wonderful because for me, it’s a chance to not subject myself to the emotional torment -- now I am physically abused," Brody states. "I’m spending 11 hours on a harness shooting stunts. I’m learning another aspect of filmmaking, which is very exciting, and I think that physical pain is easier to deal with.”

The Jacket is now playing in theaters everywhere.

For more information on the film, visit www.thejacketmovie.com.