Adrien Brody is the face of Intuit TurboTax’s Super Bowl LX spot.
The actor, who clinched the Academy Award last year for best actor for his role in The Brutalist, plays up the drama in the 45-second in-game spot, which will air just before halftime.
In the ad, Brody, playing himself, prepares for a new role as a TurboTax expert—a process proving stressful to all those around him. Rehearsing his lines, he says, “I can handle that for you” with mobster-like inflection.
In a 30-second cut of the ad that will run ahead of the game, The TurboTax rep in suggests Brody might try a “less intense” delivery, noting that TurboTax is meant to alleviate peoples’ anxiety around taxes rather than add to it. Brody contests: “I know, but it’s taxes, so when do they cry?” When Brody is told “there’s no crying,” he asks if he can cry instead.
“There’s truly no one in this space from a tax perspective that has the technology foundation that we do,” Trevor Kelley, vice president of marketing at TurboTax-parent Intuit, told ADWEEK. The goal of the advertisement, Kelley said, was to highlight TurboTax’s experts. “They’re our stars, our secret weapon in a lot of ways,” he added.
For TurboTax, Brody represented the “ideal” creative choice. “He’s, hands down, one of the greatest actors alive,” Kelley said. “He’s very deeply committed to his craft, including a Super Bowl spot.” While Brody is known for his dramatic roles, Kelley pointed to his more comedic spots on shows like Winning Time or Poker Face. Much of the content that made the final cut of the ad was improvised by Brody, Kelley said.
The Pianist actor is not a newbie to the Big Game. In 2011, he starred in Stella Artois’ first Super Bowl spot, playing a crooner in a sultry jazz club.
Brody’s latest Super Bowl appearance was directed by I, Tonya filmmaker Craig Gillespie and developed in partnership with Intuit TurboTax’s agency of record R/GA. It extends the brand’s running ‘Now This is Taxes’ campaign, which debuted in late 2024.
“TurboTax takes all the drama out of taxes by putting real experts in your corner. To prove that brand promise, we asked a simple question: What happens when you hire one of the most dramatic Oscar-winning actors alive…and even he can’t create drama?” Ryan O’Keefe, R/GA’s group creative director said in a statement. Working with Brody, he said, “let us play that tension for laughs.”
