"If you panic, it's very easy to get wedged (in) and it's completely disorienting." "That was putting a lot of faith in people by letting them do that, but the water-torture chamber was the hardest stuff." Filming that escape act, he was lowered upside down into a narrow tank of water with no nose plugs, "so you were really loaded with water," he says. "They strung me up with a crane by my ankles in a straitjacket," he says.
He bulked up, quit drinking, and tried to learn all of Houdini's tricks, even going so far as doing most of his own stunts. But signing on for the four-hour TV movie - which traces Houdini's life from childhood until his demise, focusing on the psychology of a man obsessed with cheating death - Brody adapted a more athletic lifestyle. Physically, he doesn't closely resemble Houdini: Brody is tall and lean, while the illusionist was short and stocky, the actor says. His pedigree as an Oscar-winning actor and his adoration of Houdini made him an indisputable choice for the part, says History chief Dirk Hoogstra. "It's something we can all identify with, this longing for acceptance, and he was a real hero for the working class." "He escaped much more than the physical confines of his acts and became the most iconic performer ever," Brody says. Although he eventually turned to acting in his teens, he still credits Harry Houdini as a major influence in his early years and considers playing him in miniseries Houdini (History, Sept. Growing up in a working-class neighborhood in Queens, Brody loved and studied magic from the time he was 5, performing magic shows as "the Amazing Adrien" and aspiring to become a professional when he was older. After all, he's always had that magic touch.
It's here that Adrien Brody seems to be in his element. A creaky, animatronic Houdini pops out of a box on the ceiling when you least expect it, and old-timey piano music plays faintly through speakers. NEW YORK - Inside the Houdini Museum, worn posters, locks and handcuffs adorn the deep-red walls.
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