The movie Adrien Brody staked his entire career on: “I forked up my own money to do it”

Adrien Brody could have easily gone down in history as a star who peaked early. At the age of 29, he became the youngest-ever performer to win ‘Best Actor’ at the Oscars, for his role as a composer and Holocaust survivor. in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist. This could have been a poisoned chalice, but Brody’s momentum never halted. He’s forged a profitable relationship with director Wes Anderson and, in 2025, he won a Golden Globe for his performance in Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist. 

In 2021, Brody appeared in the action thriller Clean, directed by Paul Solet. It tells the story of a garbage man who lives and works in a rundown neighbourhood of a city overflowing with drugs. His efforts to do the right thing land him the crosshairs of a local mob boss, which thrusts him out of his quiet life and into a dark and dangerous world.

In a conversation with Indie Wire, Brody revealed that Clean was more than just another job for him. “I forked up my own money to do it,” he said. “That was scary, because it was at a time in my career when I wasn’t getting certain roles. I definitely didn’t have the resources to lose.” Not only did the actor serve as one of the film’s producers, but he also co-wrote the script with Solet and provided the score. This was a passion project through and through, stemming from a very noble aim. 

“I wanted to make a movie again about the difficulties for young people to get out of impoverished conditions and pressure and violence in our urban cities, but drugs and the oppressiveness of drugs and how present it is in all of our lives, and the opioid addiction crisis in this country which stems from pain,” he explained. “It always does: drugs and pain. Why do you think so many people are on drugs? Because they want to get rid of the pain. And why do so many people drink so much? Because they’re dulling the pain, and part of that pain is the suffering of life. But then there’s also physical pains and we turn to a pain relief.”

Brody and Solet, who had previously worked together on the movie Bullet Head, had a very specific kind of story in mind for Clean. “It both honours the vengeance-thriller and the more nuanced character pieces that I gravitate to as an actor,” the star told Forbes. “I wanted to marry the two and provide something that was entertaining, commercial enough to be a worthy endeavour for our distributor and honour the world that we live in, and not sugarcoat the hardships that so many people in our society are afflicted by, and the inequality and oppressive forces that are particularly hard for young people, especially impoverished young people.”

Unfortunately, critics didn’t share Brody’s enthusiasm for the piece. It is easy to point out how formulaic the story was and how cheap the production values were, with some likening it to a B-movie. Clean made just over $300,000 at the box office, a shockingly low figure for a title featuring such a big name. 

Nevertheless, Brody got to make his vision come true, and not every film in an actor’s arsenal can be a big hit. With significant Oscar buzz surrounding him in The Brutalist, it’s safe to say that Clean’s shortcomings haven’t harmed his career one bit.

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