Adrien Brody has won his second Oscar, this time for playing the fictional Hungarian architect László Tóth in the three-and-a-half-hour epic “The Brutalist.” The win comes 22 years after Brody received the best actor trophy for his work in “The Pianist,” which made him the youngest performer to ever receive that award. Both “The Brutalist” and “The Pianist” center on Holocaust survivor characters played by Brody.

“Acting is a very fragile profession,” Brody said after accepting the award. “It looks very glamorous, and in certain moments it is. But the one thing that I’ve gained, having the privilege to come back here, is to have some perspective.”

“No matter where you are in your career, no matter what you’ve accomplished, it can all go away,” he continued. “I think what makes this night most special is the awareness of that and the gratitude that I have to still do the work that I love.”

“The Brutalist” charts László’s arrival in America after World War II, where he meets a wealthy industrialist (Guy Pearce) who enlists him to build a massive institute in Pennsylvania. Throughout the film’s awards run, Brody has spoken about his connection to the role through his mother, the photographer Sylvia Plachy, who was born in Hungary and lost maternal relatives in the concentration camps.

“I’m here once again to represent the lingering traumas and the repercussions of war and systematic oppression and of anti-Semitism and racism and othering,” Brody said in a speech that saw the orchestra start to play music in an attempt to get him to conclude before he appealed to let him keep talking.

“And I believe that I pray for a healthier and a happier and a more inclusive world,” he continued. “And I believe if the past can teach us anything, it’s a reminder to not let hate go unchecked.”

But Brody’s campaign also weathered some controversy when it emerged that the film used artificial intelligence to improve the dialogue spoken in Hungarian. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Brody said: “Obviously, his postproduction process only touched some lines spoken in Hungarian. Nothing of the dialect was altered; that’s all done through a lot of hard work with our wonderful dialect coach, Tanera Marshall. We all worked incredibly hard on it, and we all know that.”

Despite the social media hubbub, Brody was the favorite to win the Oscar. He also won the Golden Globe, the BAFTA and the Critics Choice Award.