Born and raised in New York City, Brody began acting at camp as a child but first found some notoriety as the subject of photographs taken by his mother, famed photographer Sylvia Plachy. He often credits Plachy for his acting career as her commission to shoot at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts led to Brody's enrollment in the school's young people's weekend program, where he quickly found his calling.

After making his professional acting debut in the off-Broadway play "Family Pride in the '50s", Brody acted in a handful of small film roles and played Mary Tyler Moore's stepson in the short-lived sitcom "Annie Maguire" (CBS, 1988) before hitting his stride as a delinquent who serves as a role model for a boy left alone by circumstance in "King of the Hill" (1993). Reviewers fell over themselves praising his lead performance as a gambler who gets in too deep in Eric Bross' "Nothing to Lose" when it premiered at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival. A tussle over the title led a delay in its release: now called "Ten Benny", it played theatrically in 1998. By that time, the busy actor had played Mickey Rourke's junkie brother in "Bullet" (1995), a computer whiz in "Solo" (1996) and a homosexual poet patterned after Allen Ginsberg in the independent "The Last Time I Committed Suicide" (also 1996). Reuniting with Bross, Brody received additional acclaim as an bartender/playwright in the midst of interracial romance, falling for Elise Neal after losing Lauryn Hill in "Restaurant" (1998).

After copping the disappointingly minor role in "The Thin Red Line", the actor recouped and confirmed his rising star status when Spike Lee tapped him to play a thoughtful and complex punk rocker suspected around the neighborhood of being the serial killer Son of Sam in the director's 1999 effort "Summer of Sam.” Brody also offered a display of his versatility with a remarkably unsettling turn as a murderous psychopath who buries alive a kidnap victim in the thriller "Oxygen" (aired on Cinemax in 1999 prior to a limited big-screen run). He next gave a fine starring performance as a young Jewish man who falls for an alluring Catholic girl (Carolyn Murphy) in Barry Levinson's semi-autobiographical "Liberty Heights,” a drama set amid social unrest in mid-50s Baltimore. The busy actor then had leading roles in Kenneth Loach's "Bread and Roses,” a fact-based chronicle of labor union struggles in California, and the war-torn Yugoslavia-set drama "Harrison's Flowers" (both lensed 1999). Brody was next seen as a European count opposite Hilary Swank in "The Affair of the Necklace" (2001) before appearing in the film that would provide him with a breakthrough role, director Roman Polanski's "The Pianist" (2002). As a brilliant pianist and Polish Jew who bears witness to Nazi atrocities (thanks to his musical talents) and desperately attempts to escape, Brody astounded audiences with the depth of his sensitive, melancholy performance and earned a wealth of critical plaudits as well as a leading role Oscar, catapulting him from mainstream obscurity into the upper echelons of actors.

Brody's small role in "The Singing Detective" (2003) was filmed pre-Oscar, so his next real post-win film was in writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's tension-filler thriller "The Village" (2003), playing Noah the village idiot, essentially, among a 19th Century-style community isolated from the outside world and subject to a pact with mysterious creatures living in the surrounding woods. Brody next starred in the thriller "The Jacket" (2005) as an amnesiac man convicted of murder and institutionalized who is straight-jacketed and shoved in a morgue drawer, where he sees a vision of the future that prompts him to free himself with the help of a woman he has yet to meet (Keira Knightley).

Brody next starred in the celebrity biopic-cum-crime noir, “Hollywoodland” (2006), playing Louis Simo, a private investigator who digs into the tawdry life and mysterious death of “Superman” actor George Reeves. The more Simo learns about Reeves’ complicated life, the more he learns about himself and his connection to the events. Meanwhile, Brody signed on another biopic, “Manolete” (lensed 2006), a look at the famed matador from 1940’s Spain and his love affair with actress Lupe Sino (Penelope Cruz). He also began filming the unusual biopic, “I’m Not There: Suppositions on a Film Concerning Dylan” (lensed 2006), a re-enactment of the life of Bob Dylan with multiple actors embodying different stages of the singer’s life.