Academy Award Winner Adrien Brody Shares His Approach to Name, Image, and Likeness with Brooklyn Law School Startup Class

Adjunct Professor Mitchell Littman surprised students in his Transactional Skills for Startups course with a high-profile guest speaker on Nov. 11: actor and Academy Award winner Adrien Brody, who joined the class via Zoom for a candid discussion about navigating the business of celebrity. 

Mr. Brody began by reflecting on his early path: growing up in Queens; being introduced to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts through his mother, a Village Voice photographer; and honing his craft at LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts in New York. Although he has been acting since childhood, he described his success as the result of steady, years-long work and “meaningful opportunities” along the way. His accolades include two Academy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, and a Golden Globe Award, along with nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards and a Laurence Olivier Award. In 2025, Time magazine named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people. 

The conversation soon turned to name, image, and likeness (NIL), an increasingly complex landscape for artists, athletes, and other public figures.  Mr. Brody explained that, like any professional evaluating an opportunity, he approaches NIL decisions with a structured set of considerations. For himself, Mr. Brody said he gravitates only toward opportunities that genuinely reflects his interests and values; selectivity is essential: “If something is very personal to me, I have to approach it thoughtfully,” he told the class. 

Before attaching his name to any venture, he conducts due diligence on the partner or brand. He looks closely at a company’s values, its people, and the potential long-term implications of the association. An actor’s image, he reminded students, is “your instrument and your source of livelihood.” Mr. Brody evaluates scheduling demands, creative expectations, social media requirements, and whether he can bring genuine value to the partnership. “I don’t take work unless I think I can add something meaningful,” he said—drawing a parallel to how he chooses film roles. 

Professor Littman connected Mr. Brody’s framework to the course’s focus on intellectual property, emphasizing that name, image, and likeness are themselves a form of IP—and a personal brand is an asset that others routinely seek to commercialize. The discussion also touched briefly on how emerging technologies, including AI, complicate those decisions by making likeness replication easier than ever. 

Mr. Brody joins a list of high-profile speakers discussing name, image and likeness that have participated in this class over the years, including John Legend, Hailey Beiber, John Varvatos, and Carol Alt.