Marlon Brando — biography, films, roles and trivia

Biography

Marlon Brando (full name Marlon Brando Jr.) was an American actor and activist. Considered one of the greatest and most influential actors of the twentieth century, he received numerous awards over his sixty-year career, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Cannes Film Festival award, and three BAFTA Awards. Brando is credited as one of the first actors to bring the Stanislavski system and method acting to a wide audience. Marlon Brando came under the influence of Stella Adler and the Stanislavski system in the early 1940s. He began his career on the stage, skillfully interpreting his characters and anticipating the development of stage action. He made the transition to cinema, gaining recognition and his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in the film A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). The actor received greater attention and his first Academy Award and Golden Globe for the role of Terry Malloy in the drama On the Waterfront (1954), which became a turning point in Hollywood history, and his work continues to be studied and interpreted. Brando's transformation into the rebellious biker gang leader Johnny Strabler in The Wild One (1953) became a symbol of the generation gap.

In the 1960s, Marlon Brando's acting career experienced a creative and economic decline. He served as director and lead actor in the cult western One-Eyed Jacks, which flopped at the box office, incurred losses, and received negative critical reviews. This was followed by a series of notable box office failures. Thus, the poorly made drama Mutiny on the Bounty dealt a severe blow to his film career. After ten years of failures and a noticeable decline in interest in cinema, Brando brilliantly played the role of Vito Corleone in the epic crime drama The Godfather (1972), which brought him his second Oscar and Golden Globe. Brando received these awards for a portrayal considered one of the most brilliant in the history of the art, as determined in numerous polls of critics, directors, and other actors. His roles in The Godfather and the erotic drama Last Tango in Paris (1972), which brought the actor his seventh Oscar nomination, restored Brando's status as one of the highest-grossing actors.

Filmography

2

1957 Sayonara Major Lloyd Gruver

1953 The Wild One Johnny Strabler

Awards & recognition

2 nominations · 2 Award ceremony

Academy Awards 1 nominations

Best Actor Sayonara 1958

Golden Globe Awards 1 nominations

Best Actor (Drama) Sayonara 1958

Interesting facts

17

1
Marlon Brando's name is mentioned in dozens of popular songs, including the following: "Pocahontas" by Neil Young, "China Girl" by David Bowie and Iggy Pop, "We Didn't Start the Fire" by Billy Joel, "Vogue" and "Super Pop" by Madonna, "Advertising Space" by Robbie Williams, "It's So Hard to Be a Saint In the City" by Bruce Springsteen, "I Wanna Be Marlon Brando" by Russell Crowe, "Back to Tupelo" by Mark Knopfler, and "Eyeless" by Slipknot.
2
Marlon was expelled from high school for riding a motorcycle in the hallway.
3
His son Miko C. Brando was a bodyguard for Michael Jackson.
4
One of Brando's last on-screen appearances was in the music video for his friend Michael Jackson's song "You Rock My World" (2001).
5
The actor ordered taxi drivers delivering food from McDonald's to toss the hamburgers over the wall of his Mulholland Drive estate.
6
Brando had five children, not counting three adopted ones.
7
Brando never hid the fact that he kept at his home an urn with the ashes of his closest friend (and, as some claimed, lover), actor Wally Cox, and stipulated that his ashes be scattered together with his own; when Cox's widow learned of this from an interview, she tried to file a lawsuit to retrieve her husband's ashes, but the judge found no grounds for a case.
8
He died of pulmonary fibrosis.
9
The actor spent 18 thousand dollars transporting sand from Tahiti for an aquarium in his Los Angeles mansion.
10
Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro are the only actors to have won an Academy Award for playing the same person - Vito Corleone (The Godfather duology).
11
In 1980, Brando announced his retirement from film, but he periodically continued to appear in supporting roles; he spent a significant portion of his time in Tahiti, where he married a local woman.
12
The actor once let slip in an interview with The New Yorker about his mother's alcoholism and his own bisexuality, which he later deeply regretted.
13
The actor's mentally unstable daughter, Cheyenne, told her brother Christian (Brando's son) that her boyfriend was beating her (which was untrue), and Christian shot the boyfriend in Brando's living room. In 1995, the actor's daughter hanged herself.
14
Shortly before his death, the actor ranked fourth on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest Stars of 100 Years and was included in Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
15
Beginning in 1976, many of Brando's biographers claimed that he was bisexual; in 2006, a book was even published with speculation that Brando had an affair with another legend of American cinema, Cary Grant.
16
In his autobiography, Brando claims that he had an affair with Marilyn Monroe; among the actors of the younger generation, he was friends with Johnny Depp.
17
On live television, he explained to TV host Larry King that Hollywood is run by a "secret Jewish community," and then kissed him on the lips.