SHOWREEL

CREDITS

CONTACT

LINKS

MOVIE ACTOR / S

HOME

MY SHOWREEL

MARLON BRANDO

An influential, eccentric stage and screen actor--perhaps the most influential and respected of his generation--Marlon Brando first made his name as an exponent of 'The Method', an acting style based on the teachings of Constantin Stanislavsky. Method acting rejected the traditional techniques of stagecraft in favor of an emotional expressiveness ideally suited to the angst-ridden atmosphere of postwar American society. Brando studied the Stanislavsky technique in the 1940s, first at the New School and later at the Actors Studio.
The Nebraska native made his Broadway debut in the sentimental hit "I Remember Mama" (1944), and co-starred opposite Katharine Cornell in "Candida" (1946) and briefly toured with Tallulah Bankhead in "The Eagle Has Two Heads" the same year. His breakthrough came with his searing portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1947), directed by Elia Kazan. The role established a new order of acting intensity and eventually led Brando to Hollywood. He also made his first TV appearance during this period, on a 1949 episode of "Actors Studio" (ABC). Brando's only other contributions to TV have been a ten-minute, Emmy-winning cameo as American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell in "Roots: The Next Generation" (ABC, 1979) and a 1991 PBS special on the Actors Studio.

Brando finally killed his rebel image in the 1960s. He appeared as a drifter romancing a middle-aged Italian woman (Anna Magnani) and a Southern belle (Joanne Woodward) in Sidney Lumet's uneven "The Fugitive Kind" (1960), an adaptation of Tennessee Williams' stage play "Orpheus Descending". Brando went on to appear as a figure of authority in "The Ugly American" (1963) and a con artist in "Bedtime Story" (1964). But despite complex performances in John Huston's "Reflections in a Golden Eye" (1967) and "Burn!" (1969), he had been largely abandoned by his audience. Voted a top boxoffice star from 1955 to 1958, he dropped to a has-been in the late 1960s.

It was not until Francis Ford Coppola cast him in the title role of "The Godfather" (1972) that he regained stature. Brando's sensitive turn as the aging Don Corleone received critical praise, set the tone for the entire film and earned him a second Best Actor Oscar (which he declined). He gave a bizarre, somewhat controversial performance as a self-destructive American in Bernardo Bertolucci's disturbing "Last Tango in Paris" (1972); the sexually charged role--in which has been long rumored that Brando took the "Method" to new levels in his love scenes with Maria Schneider--earned the actor his seventh Best Actor Academy Award nomination.

Since then, Brando has repeatedly announced his retirement from acting, but has made more than a dozen films. In Arthur Penn's "The Missouri Breaks" (1976), he offered an eccentric, over-the-top performance as a hired gun tracking horse thief Jack Nicholson and followed with a highly-paid but brief cameo as Jor-El, father of "Superman" (1978). He was downright terrifying as Kurtz, the dark heart of Coppola's hallucinogenic war drama "Apocalypse Now" (1979)--Brando, at the height of his professional ecentricity and engaged in a unique cat-and-mouse dance with his director, delivers one of the most compelling and avant garde performances of his career, and both the role and the film would become more potent with the passage of time.