No one felt sillier while watching Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring in 2001 than Adrien Brody. In an interview with GQ, where he looks back at some of his most iconic roles, Brody reveals that he turned down a role in the epic fantasy franchise.
“I remember going to see Lord Of The Rings in the theater with an ex-girlfriend. And she turned to me and said, ‘You passed on Lord Of The Rings?!’” Brody recalls in the video. “I remember feeling so stupid. But I don’t think I would have gotten the role of Jack in Peter’s [King Kong]. I don’t think that would have translated.”
Brody reveals he fumbled the bag while analyzing his performance as Jack Driscoll in Jackson’s King Kong (2005). Brody, who is 6'1, says he is unsure what his character would have been in LOTR—but possibly, it was a taller-than-average hobbit.
“I, somehow, didn’t grasp it,” Brody admits. “I don’t know what part I would have been right for, but it was some Hobbit-like character. I was looking for something else.”
It would take a few more years before Brody would work with the director on King Kong. The three-hour gorilla drama faired pretty well, and as a result Brody got his face printed on McDonald’s cups for a while.
“We had a premiere in Times Square and they shut down all of Times Square,” he says. “The mayor was there and introduced us to the city. It was a big deal. My face was immortalized on a McDonald’s soda cup. When does that happen for anyone?”
In the end, everything seems to have worked out all right for the Oscar winner who, after turning down the LOTR part, immediately went on to star in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist. The actor will soon appear in a guest role in the third season of HBO’s Succession. He will also star in Wes Anderson’s forthcoming feature, The French Dispatch.