Adrien Brody is glad The Thin Red Line didn't work out the way he wanted

One small encounter, decision, or personal slight can change the entire trajectory of your life. That’s one of the many lessons of The Brutalist, Brady Corbet’s gargantuan new film about an architect who spends nearly three decades of his life working for a wealthy client after a relatively small job puts their lives on a collision course. It’s also true for the star of the film, Adrien Brody, in real life. Without a gutting disappointment early in his career, he may never have gone on to win his Oscar for The Pianist in 2002, or have starred in this film at all.

It happened in 1998, when Brody—then 23—watched Terrence Malick’s WWII drama The Thin Red Line for the first time. It was supposed to be the film that made his name. According to a new interview with GQ, his team had begun to roll out his Oscar campaign for the role of Corporal Fife, when they learned the director had completely retooled the film in post-production. In the end, Brody only appeared for about five minutes.

After all these years, however, the actor has found a silver lining to this dark chapter. “I was always kind of grateful that The Thin Red Line was such a harrowing experience for me, and full of personal loss,” he told GQ. “There was public embarrassment and potential career disaster affiliated with all of that—I didn’t know that the role had been eviscerated. Then I looked back and I thought, How lucky I am that I averted acclaim and praise at that age.”

It’s a refrain we’ve heard a lot lately, but for Brody, missing out on early fame gave him more than a mental health boost. It also gave him time to lay low and hone his taste, so he could eventually land the sort of clout-heavy, Serious Actor roles he’s known for today. “Had I not done that supporting role in The Affair Of The Necklace and not worked with Mishka (Cheyko, the film’s first AD), who sang my praises, then who knows what that path would be?” he reflected. “In retrospect, it’s often easy to see that you could have done better here, or you shouldn’t have done that, but sometimes you have to look back and say, ‘It’s kind of amazing how that happened.'” That will be good advice for Joel Edgerton—who initially got the Brutalist part but had to turn it down due to a scheduling conflict—to keep in mind whenever he watches the film; even more so if Brody is announced as a two-time Oscar nominee when the list goes live next Thursday.