Brody's bunch

When veteran British director Ken Loach went to make Bread And Roses in Hollywood - his first film to be almost entirely shot in America - his reputation as a politically committed European auteur preceded him. 'There was one day during shooting when Chris Penn, Benicio Del Toro and Tim Roth came down for a day, to work and show their support for Ken,' recalls Adrien Brody, the 24-year-old who plays the film's male lead, union organiser Sam, an outsider who rallies and motivates the largely female and immigrant workforce. 'Those actors are all people I admire greatly and I thought this is pretty amazing. When you get guys like that coming in to be extras in a film you're working on, it feels uplifting. But I think it's just the sort of respect Ken deserves - he makes fascinating films and isn't afraid to say what he feels. There is no ulterior motive in his film-making.'

Loach's reputation among the Tinseltown cognoscenti first came to light in the mid-Seventies when Francis Ford Coppola tried to lure him Stateside to work for his ill-fated Zoetrope production company. But it wasn't until Loach's erstwhile screen-writing collaborator Paul Laverty (My Name Is Joe, Carla's Song) built a story around the long-running Justice For Janitors campaign that the director felt ready to work in the country he regards as 'the bully of the world'.

As in previous films, Loach's cast largely comprises unknown and untrained actors, some of whom have experienced the long-running dispute in real life. Although the great and the good were on hand to provide assistance - Steven Soderbergh helped find locations, Joel Coen and Frances McDormand made their apartment available when his washing-machine packed up - Loach shied away from using big Hollywood names keen to enhance their credibility. 'If you get someone well-known the film is unbalanced and it becomes about them being in the film rather than the story,' he reflects. 'Adrien is in an interesting position because he's a talented lad and I felt he was at the point where his career could take off in a big way - we got him just in time. The thing we liked about him was he had real mischief in his eyes. In that part he could have been very sanctimonious - we wanted someone who was a little subversive.'

Raised in Queens, New York, Brody is the son of a Jewish schoolteacher father and a Catholic mother, Sylvia Plachy, a respected photojournalist. His mother introduced him to acting, via the American Academy Of Dramatic Arts, at the age of ten. 'It was perfect timing, pre-adolescence and the point where you get self-conscious about who you are. I found I wasn't inhibited. When I was a kid I was fascinated with magic - I liked to fool people. I think it was the appropriate transition into acting. Being a magician you're performing. What I loved was that I could trick people into believing that something happened that hadn't.'

Despite a small part in Coppola's New York Stories in 1989, Brody struggled to make an impression in Hollywood until he appeared in Soderbergh's King Of The Hill in 1993. The 'subversive' instinct that attracted Loach came to the fore in his incendiary lead role in Spike Lee's Summer Of Sam, where he played the local punk victimised by the neighbourhood thugs. It's a quality that can be traced to Brody's love of rap music. 'I grew up at the dawn of hip-hop,' he confirms, 'and it's been a major influence on my life. It became very empowering for people growing up in the inner cities. It's still very close to me.'

Prior to Summer Of Sam he spent five months in Australia making the war epic The Thin Red Line. But he was one of the main casualties of the shoot, his role pruned to barely five minutes' screen time. 'Of course it was a grave disappointment,' he admits, 'but it was helpful for my career. It was very intense work, and I had to deal with things not turning out the way I wanted. That type of rejection early in a career is a good thing, it turns you into a man.'

To prepare for his role in Summer Of Sam he spiked his hair, donned punk clothes and took to the streets of New York. 'Not my style at all but at that point I was hardly recognised. That role was about taking criticism, being strong and believing in yourself. It was my liberation where I got to be free, uninhibited and say, "F*** what society thinks. I'm not afraid." It changed me again.'

As we talk, he's in Poland at the start of a five-month shoot with Maureen Lipman on Roman Polanski's The Pianist. Along with Bread And Roses and the upcoming French film The Affair Of The Necklace (he co-stars with Hilary Swank) it's his third European production in the last two years. 'I'm more in touch with these types of projects than a lot of material that has been submitted to me in America - material I've chosen not to do or been lucky enough not to get. I knew Ken's work but never expected the opportunity to work with him would arise. Then there he was in LA, casting. I thought it was strange - he had me do a series of improvisations and wouldn't reveal anything about the part. It was the first and probably the last time that I'll take a film without having a script - and that was all based on Ken.'

Researching and playing Sam was another role that took time - he had Spanish lessons and, anonymously, enrolled at a union organising course in Oakland. 'I asked him how he got on,' smiles Loach, 'he said it was good but that he was quite used to having his own room. He shared with someone else - for a Hollywood actor that was quite an unusual thing to be asked to do.'

Brody says playing Sam has made him much more aware of poverty in Los Angeles. 'There's this whole thriving community that you don't see that keeps LA afloat. The janitors won a major victory in the dispute after we finished the film. I witnessed people who'd worked within the film doing it in real life and winning a victory, it was very uplifting.'