Adrien Brody Packed on Muscle to Fight Aliens - Great man

Adrien Brody talked to the L.A. Times about his 25-pound transformation to action hero for the sci-fi thriller Predators:

Adrien Brody isn't kidding himself — he knows that when people hear his name, "action hero" isn't the first description that comes to mind.

"The comment is constantly like 'skinny actor.' I'm thin. I'm not skinny at all," said Brody, 37, seeming slightly irritated as he reclined poolside at a Los Angeles hotel last month. "It's that they harp on a physical thing, because I don't think there's a question about my ability as an actor."

In the new film, Brody plays an amoral mercenary who leads a group of assassins through the inhospitable landscape of an alien planet, where they have been planted to exterminate a menacing breed of alien species.

"It's a role that a studio wouldn't necessarily have me on a list for. And I had to kind of do some convincing, that I'm capable of physical transformation. It was a very challenging thing for me to embark on. I think that fans have expectations if you're going to reboot a series like that — so there's a certain amount of risk that inspires me. It's very different from something I've done before...When I was training, I wasn't really showing off the progress, and at the end, I think I scared them because I had grown a lot and they were all pretty shocked at how I looked."

"When I was training, I wasn't really showing off the progress, and at the end, I think I scared them because I had grown a lot and they were all pretty shocked at how I looked," he said, glancing down at his body. His flannel shirt fell loosely onto his frame, and it appeared that he had since shed much of the muscle mass he gained for the film.