Fear of 13 star Adrien Brody polarized viewers with his acceptance speech at the 2025 Oscars, which broke an all-time record at nearly six minutes in length.
Adrien Brody reflects on his record-length Oscar acceptance speech
Adrien Brody explains why his long speech at the 2025 Oscars was important and why perspective is impossible in that moment.
NEW YORK – Adrien Brody has a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most capitalized and serious actors.
But the megastar, who is making his Broadway debut in The Fear of 13, has always had a good sense of humor about himself.
In early 2025, Brody set a record for the longest Oscar speech in the nearly 100-year history of the Academy Awards, taking five minutes and 40 seconds to accept his Best Actor trophy for The Brutalist. The actor was harshly ridiculed online for reflecting on his career, touching on related issues such as racism, systemic oppression and anti-Semitism, and saying a meandering line at the top of his usual list of words: “Thank you.”
Looking back now, “it’s pretty funny,” Brody told USA TODAY. “First of all, I want everyone to really have a perspective on that moment in their life, because you don’t have a perspective. As you can see, I take a long time to express my thoughts, but I try to share what I want to say. There were a lot of people and a lot of situations that miraculously led me to that place, trying to unravel myself under the pressure of being in front of the world, and it took me a little longer than I expected.
“I see people making such a fuss about things…you know, nobody criticizes this much,” Brody continues. “But that’s all good. It’s part of the privilege and part of the joy of being recognized. There was nothing to spend more time on than the allotted time, if that makes sense. (Laughs) It was clearly a moment of deep reflection and joy, and I had to express it as well as I could. And sometimes I don’t.”
However, “it was also the longest screen time of any actor,” Brody said playfully. “So we should be allowed three more seconds without paddling!”
In the nearly three-and-a-half hour epic, The Brutalist, Brody plays a fictional Hungarian-Jewish architect who survives the Holocaust and immigrate to the United States, where he encounters insidious exploitation and hardship. In a mesmerizing performance, he appeared for two hours and eight minutes in the Brady Corbett-directed drama, breaking Charlton Heston’s 65-year-old record for most screenplays for a Best Actor winner.
Brody attended this year’s Oscar ceremony in March, where he presented the Best Actor award to Michael B. Jordan (Sinners). Before handing over the hardware, Brody leaves with a stack of papers and has a little fun at his own expense, pretending to be exhausted by the orchestra’s playoff music. (But don’t worry, he didn’t throw the chewing gum this time.)
This humorous part was something Brody and his team suggested to the show’s producers. During Oscar rehearsals, he riffed even more than during the actual television broadcast.
“I was just joking around, but they asked me to follow the script to the letter,” Brody recalls with a laugh. “But we presented (the idea), we thought it was pretty funny, and they accepted the joke.”
