
Age: 53
male
Adrien Nicholas Brody was born in Woodhaven, Queens, New York, the only child of retired history professor Elliot Brody and Hungarian-born photographer Sylvia Plachy. He accompanied his mother on assignments for the Village Voice, and credits her with making him feel comfortable in front of the camera. Adrien attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts in New York. Despite a strong performance in The Thin Red Line (1998), time constraints forced the director to edit out much of Adrien's part. In spite of his later work with Spike Lee and Barry Levinson, he never became the star many expected he would become until Roman Polanski called on him to play a celebrated Jewish pianist in Nazi-occupied Warsaw. He pulled off a brilliant performance in The Pianist (2002), drawing on the heritage and rare dialect of his Polish-born grandmother, as well as his father, who lost family members during the Holocaust, and his mother, who fled Communist Hungary as a child during the 1956 uprising against the Soviet Union.

The near future of 2004,[i] Michael Townley, Trevor Philips, and Brad Snider partake in a failed robbery in Ludendorff, North Yankton, resulting in all three being presumed dead. Nine years later, Michael is living with his family in the city of Los Santos, under the alias Michael De Santa, after making a secret agreement with the Federal Investigation Bureau (FIB)[j] agent Dave Norton to stay hidden. Across town, gangbanger Franklin Clinton is working for a corrupt Armenian car salesman and meets Michael while attempting to fraudulently repossess his son's car; the two later become friends. When Michael finds his wife sleeping with her tennis coach, he and Franklin chase the coach to a mansion, which Michael destroys in anger. The owner of the mansion, drug lord Martin Madrazo, demands compensation. Michael returns to a life of crime to obtain the money, enlisting Franklin as an accomplice. With the help of Michael's old friend Lester Crest, a disabled hacker, they rob a jewellery store to pay off the debt. Meanwhile, Trevor, who now lives in squalor on the outskirts of Los Santos, hears of the heist and realises that it was Michael's work; Trevor had believed that Michael was killed in the Ludendorff heist. Trevor tracks Michael down and reunites with him, forcing Michael to reluctantly accept him back into his life.


