Marlon brando biography imdb

Before James Dean — , Marlon Brando popularized the jeans-and-T-shirt look, as a movie idol during the early s. Hollywood was impressed with Brando, and in he made his motion picture debut as a severely injured war veteran in The Men. The movie was both a popular and a critical success. Brando played a variety of different characters over the next several years.

In his next movie, Viva Zapata! Brando won his first Academy Award in for his role in On the Water-front, a hard-hitting look at New York City labor unions a workers' group organized to help workers receive fair wages. From to people in the movie industry always voted Brando as one of the top ten film attractions in the nation. During the s, however, his career had more downs than ups.

The movie was a disaster at the box office. It failed to earn even half of its enormous budget the money it cost to make it. Brando's excessive self-indulgence spoiled behavior reached its height during the filming of this movie. He was criticized for his tantrums fits of bad temper on the set and for trying to alter the script.

Off the set he ate too much and would not associate with the cast and crew. For the rest of the s Brando acted in several movies, but none of them was considered to be of very high quality. Brando's career was reborn in with his portrayal of Mafia a secret, criminal organization leader Don Corleone in The Godfather. He won his second Oscar for that role, but he refused to accept it because of how he felt Hollywood showed Native Americans in its movies.

Brando did not appear at the Academy Awards ceremony to personally deny the trophy. In Brando changed his mind and tried to get the gold Oscar statuette, but his request was denied. Brando continued to work in many films after The Godfather, both as a star and in smaller roles in dramas and comedies. Critics have said that both the movies themselves as well as Brando's performances have been of very uneven quality.

The unhappy family life Brando had as a child has been mirrored in his own family life as an adult. He has had many failed marriages and has experienced personal tragedy from the actions of two of his children. A son served time in prison for manslaughter and a daughter committed suicide. Brando's years of self-indulgence are visible. He overate until he weighed well over three hundred pounds in the mids.

However, to judge Brando by his appearance today and dismiss his work because of his later, less significant acting jobs, would be a mistake. The range of the roles he played is a testament to his ability to explore many aspects of the human psyche mind. Brando seems perfectly content knowing his best work is behind him. He still remains an influence for actors today, and has won popular acclaim and critical consensus as one of the greatest cinema actors of the late twentieth century.

Cary, Gary. Marlon Brando: The Only Contender. London, England : Robson, Brando, Marlon gale. Learn more about citation styles Citation styles Encyclopedia. Brando, Marlon b. Foster Hirsch. The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives. Marlon Brando gale. Marlon Brando Beginning with his early career in the films of the s, through his powerful roles in such classics as On the Waterfront, A Streetcar Named Desire, and The Godfather, Marlon Brando born has captivated the American public with his intense on-screen presence, as well as with his personal life of controversy and excess.

Sources Chicago Tribune, July 3, , p. Entertainment Weekly, July 16, , pp. New York Times, July 3, , p. People, July 19, , pp. The young actor Brando returned to his family and ended up taking a job digging ditches. Brando goes to Hollywood Before James Dean — , Marlon Brando popularized the jeans-and-T-shirt look, as a movie idol during the early s.

A period of decline From to people in the movie industry always voted Brando as one of the top ten film attractions in the nation. Second rise Brando's career was reborn in with his portrayal of Mafia a secret, criminal organization leader Don Corleone in The Godfather. Life after the Oscar Brando continued to work in many films after The Godfather, both as a star and in smaller roles in dramas and comedies.

A life of turmoil The unhappy family life Brando had as a child has been mirrored in his own family life as an adult. For More Information Cary, Gary. Nickens, Christopher. Brando: A Biography in Pictures. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Schickel, Richard. Brando: A Life in Our Times. New York, NY: Atheneum, Brando, Marlon oxford.

Brando, Marlon — US actor. A brooding presence with an inimitable mumbling vocal style, he trained at the Actors' Studio. In , a reprise of his Broadway role for the film A Streetcar Named Desire earned him the first of four consecutive Oscar nominations. He finally won his first best actor Oscar as the isolated docker in On the Waterfront By the end of the s, he was the first actor to command a million-dollar appearance fee.

He was awarded a second Best Actor Oscar for his lead performance in The Godfather , but refused the award in protest against the persecution of Native Americans. More From encyclopedia. About this article Marlon Brando All Sources -. Updated Aug 13 About encyclopedia. Related Topics William Shakespeare. The Actors Studio. Marlitt, Eugenie — Marlinsky, Cossack.

Marling, Karal Ann Marlin Business Services Corp. Marliave, Joseph de. Marliani, Giovanni. Marliani, Count Marco Aurelio. Marley, Rita —. Marley, Marie Hilda, Sister. Marley, Louise —. Marley, Louise Marley, Jacob. Marley, Damian. Marley, Cedella —. Marley, Bob actually, Robert Nesta. The movie industry executive and producer Marlon Brando, Sr.

Marlon, Jr. Marlon Sr. The Brando family was often uprooted, moving from Nebraska to Illinois and eventually without Marlon Sr. Brando Sr. By that time, he had managed to lose a great deal of his son's money in unwise investment schemes, and to marry a woman many years his junior after the death of his wife and Marlon's mother. After the movie's release, the sales of leather jackets and motorcycles skyrocketed.

There's a line in the picture where he snarls, 'Nobody tells me what to do. In , Brando starred in On the Waterfront , a crime drama film about union violence and corruption among longshoremen. His performance, spurred on by his rapport with Eva Marie Saint and Kazan's direction, was praised as a tour de force. For the scene in which Terry laments his failings, saying I coulda been a contender , he convinced Kazan that the scripted scene was unrealistic.

Schulberg's script had Brando acting the entire scene with his character being held at gunpoint by his brother Charlie, played by Rod Steiger. Brando insisted on gently pushing away the gun, saying that Terry would never believe that his brother would pull the trigger and doubting that he could continue his speech while fearing a gun on him. Kazan let Brando improvise and later expressed deep admiration for Brando's instinctive understanding, saying:.

What other actor, when his brother draws a pistol to force him to do something shameful, would put his hand on the gun and push it away with the gentleness of a caress? Who else could read "Oh, Charlie! If there is a better performance by a man in the history of film in America, I don't know what it is. Weiler praised the film, calling it "an uncommonly powerful, exciting, and imaginative use of the screen by gifted professionals.

I thought I was a huge failure. Much later, it turned up at a London auction house, which contacted the actor and informed him of its whereabouts. Brando was in the film adaptation of the musical Guys and Dolls Guys and Dolls would be Brando's first and last musical role. Time found the picture "false to the original in its feeling", remarking that Brando "sings in a faraway tenor that sometimes tends to be flat.

They sewed my words together on one song so tightly that when I mouthed it in front of the camera, I nearly asphyxiated myself". Relations between Brando and costar Frank Sinatra were also frosty, with Stefan Kanfer observing: "The two men were diametrical opposites: Marlon required multiple takes; Frank detested repeating himself.

Brando played Sakini, a Japanese interpreter for the U. Pauline Kael was not particularly impressed by the movie, but noted "Marlon Brando starved himself to play the pixie interpreter Sakini, and he looks as if he's enjoying the stunt—talking with a mad accent, grinning boyishly, bending forward, and doing tricky movements with his legs. He's harmlessly genial and he is certainly missed when he's offscreen , though the fey, roguish role doesn't allow him to do what he's great at and it's possible that he's less effective in it than a lesser actor might have been.

Newsweek found the film a "dull tale of the meeting of the twain", but it was nevertheless a box-office success. According to Stefan Kanfer's biography of the actor, Brando's manager Jay Kanter negotiated a profitable contract with ten percent of the gross going to Brando, which put him in the millionaire category. The movie was controversial due to openly discussing interracial marriage , but proved a great success, earning 10 Academy Award nominations, with Brando being nominated for Best Actor.

The film went on to win four Academy Awards. Teahouse and Sayonara were the first in a string of films Brando would strive to make over the next decade which contained socially relevant messages, and he formed a partnership with Paramount to establish his own production company called Pennebaker, its declared purpose to develop films that contained "social value that would improve the world.

In , Brando appeared in The Young Lions , dyeing his hair blonde and assuming a German accent for the role, which he later admitted was not convincing. The film is based on the novel by Irwin Shaw , and Brando's portrayal of the character Christian Diestl was controversial for its time. I thought the story should demonstrate that there are no inherently 'bad' people in the world, but they can easily be misled.

I play the role; now he exists. He is my creation. The film was based on another play by Tennessee Williams but was hardly the success A Streetcar Named Desire had been, with the Los Angeles Times labeling Williams' personae "psychologically sick or just plain ugly" and The New Yorker calling it a "cornpone melodrama". In , Brando made his directorial debut in the western One-Eyed Jacks.

The picture was originally directed by Stanley Kubrick , but he was fired early in the production. Paramount then made Brando the director. Brando's penchant for multiple retakes and character exploration as an actor carried over into his directing, however, and the film soon went over budget; Paramount expected the film to take three months to complete but shooting stretched to six and the cost doubled to more than six million dollars.

Brando's inexperience as an editor also delayed postproduction and Paramount eventually took control of the film. Brando later wrote, "Paramount said it didn't like my version of the story; I'd had everyone lie except Karl Malden. The studio cut the movie to pieces and made him a liar, too. By then, I was bored with the whole project and walked away from it".

Brando's revulsion with the film industry reportedly boiled over on the set of his next film, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 's remake of Mutiny on the Bounty , which was filmed in Tahiti. The actor was accused of deliberately sabotaging nearly every aspect of the production. Mutiny director Lewis Milestone claimed that the executives "deserve what they get when they give a ham actor, a petulant child, complete control over an expensive picture.

Critics also began taking note of his fluctuating weight. Distracted by his personal life and becoming disillusioned with his career, Brando began to view acting as a means to a financial end. Critics protested when he started accepting roles in films many perceived as being beneath his talent, or criticized him for failing to live up to the better roles.

Previously only signing short-term deals with film studios, in Brando uncharacteristically signed a five-picture deal with Universal Studios that would haunt him for the rest of the decade. The Ugly American was the first of these films. Based on the novel of the same title that Pennebaker had optioned, the film, which featured Brando's sister Jocelyn, was rated fairly positively but died at the box office.

Brando was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance. The experience turned out to be an unhappy one; Brando was horrified at Chaplin's didactic style of direction and his authoritarian approach. Brando had also appeared in the spy thriller Morituri in ; that, too, failed to attract an audience. Brando acknowledged his professional decline, writing later, "Some of the films I made during the sixties were successful; some weren't.

Some, like The Night of the Following Day , I made only for the money; others, like Candy , I did because a friend asked me to and I didn't want to turn him down In some ways I think of my middle age as the Fuck You Years. It is generally regarded as the nadir of Brando's career. The Washington Post observed: "Brando's self-indulgence over a dozen years is costing him and his public his talents.

Not for the first time, Mr. Brando gives us a heavy-lidded, adenoidally openmouthed caricature of the inarticulate, stalwart loner. I was very convincing in my pose of indifference, but I was very sensitive and it hurt a lot. Brando portrayed a repressed gay army officer in Reflections in a Golden Eye , directed by John Huston and co-starring Elizabeth Taylor.

The role turned out as one of his most acclaimed in years, with Stanley Crouch marveling, "Brando's main achievement was to portray the taciturn but stoic gloom of those pulverized by circumstances. The film deals with themes of racism, sexual revolution, small-town corruption, and vigilantism. The film was received mostly positively.

Brando cited Burn! Brando also detailed his clashes with Pontecorvo on the set and how "we nearly killed each other. During the s, Brando was considered "unbankable". Brando's performance as Vito Corleone , the "Don", in The Godfather , Francis Ford Coppola 's adaptation of Mario Puzo 's bestselling novel of the same name , was a career turning point, putting him back in the Top Ten and winning him his second Best Actor Oscar.

Paramount production chief Robert Evans , who had given Puzo an advance to write The Godfather so that Paramount would own the film rights, [ 61 ] hired Coppola after many major directors had turned the film down. Evans wanted an Italian-American director who could provide the film with cultural authenticity. Coppola also came cheap. Evans was conscious of the fact that Paramount's last Mafia film, The Brotherhood had been a box office bomb, and he believed it was partly due to the fact that the director, Martin Ritt , and the star, Kirk Douglas , were Jewish, and the film lacked an authentic Italian flavor.

Coppola admitted in a interview, "We finally figured we had to lure the best actor in the world. It was that simple. That boiled down to Laurence Olivier or Marlon Brando, who are the greatest actors in the world. Evans told Coppola that he had been thinking of Brando for the part two years earlier, and Puzo had imagined Brando in the part when he wrote the novel and had actually written to him about the part, [ 65 ] so Coppola and Evans narrowed it down to Brando.

Albert S. Ruddy , whom Paramount assigned to produce the film, agreed with the choice of Brando. However, Paramount studio executives were opposed to casting Brando, due to his reputation for difficulty and his long string of box office flops. Brando also had One-Eyed Jacks working against him, a troubled production that lost money for Paramount when it was released in Paramount Pictures President Stanley Jaffe told an exasperated Coppola "As long as I'm president of this studio, Marlon Brando will not be in this picture, and I will no longer allow you to discuss it.

Jaffe eventually set three conditions for the casting of Brando: That he would have to take a fee far below what he typically received; he would have to agree to accept financial responsibility for any production delays his behavior cost; and he had to submit to a screen test. Coppola convinced Brando to do a videotaped "make-up" test, in which Brando did his own makeup he used cotton balls to simulate the character's puffed cheeks.

Coppola had feared Brando might be too young to play the Don, but was electrified by the actor's characterization as the head of a crime family. Even so, he had to fight the studio in order to cast the temperamental actor. Brando had doubts himself, stating in his autobiography, "I had never played an Italian before, and I didn't think I could do it successfully.

Who is this old guinea? As the most seasoned actor on set, he wielded his influence to support the creatives on the project, serving as the "head of the family" much like his role in the film. They were very unhappy with it. They didn't like the cast. They didn't like the way I was shooting it. I was always on the verge of getting fired. Brando's performance was glowingly reviewed by critics.

Robinson played, but who is kind of a hero, a man to be respected," Brando recalled in his autobiography. In other words he, like, deemphasized the word action. He would go in front of that camera just like he was before. It was all the same. There was really no beginning. I learned a lot from watching that. Scott for Patton. Brando did not attend the award ceremony; instead, he sent actress Sacheen Littlefeather who appeared in Plains Indian -style regalia to decline the Oscar on his behalf.

In the written speech Brando added that he hoped his declining the Oscar would be seen as "an earnest effort to focus attention on an issue that might very well determine whether or not this country has the right to say from this point forward we believe in the inalienable rights of all people to remain free and independent on lands that have supported their life beyond living memory.

The actor followed The Godfather with Bernardo Bertolucci's film Last Tango in Paris , playing opposite Maria Schneider , but Brando's highly noted performance threatened to be overshadowed by an uproar over the sexual content of the film. Brando portrays a recent American widower named Paul, who begins an anonymous sexual relationship with a young, betrothed Parisian woman named Jeanne.

As with previous films, Brando refused to memorize his lines for many scenes; instead, he wrote his lines on cue cards and posted them around the set for easy reference, leaving Bertolucci with the problem of keeping them out of the picture frame. The film features several intense, graphic scenes involving Brando, including Paul anally raping Jeanne using butter as a lubricant, which it was alleged was not consensual.

Bertolucci also shot a scene which showed Brando's genitals, but in explained, "I had so identified myself with Brando that I cut it out of shame for myself. To show him naked would have been like showing me naked. And he was Marlon Brando! Brando refused to speak to Bertolucci for 15 years after the production was completed. Bertolucci said:.

I was thinking that it was like a dialogue where he was really answering my questions in a way. When at the end of the movie, when he saw it, I discovered that he realized what we were doing, that he was delivering so much of his own experience. And he was very upset with me, and I told him, "Listen, you are a grown-up. Older than me.

Didn't you realize what you were doing? First of all, he answered the phone, and he was talking to me like we had seen each other a day earlier. He said, "Come here. I was so emotional. Bertolucci and Brando have altered the face of an art form. Brando wrenched his ashes from his widow, who was going to sue for their return, but finally said, "Marlon needed the ashes more than I did.

The movie also reunited the actor with director Arthur Penn. As biographer Stefan Kanfer describes, Penn had difficulty controlling Brando, who seemed intent on going over the top with his border-ruffian-turned-contract-killer Robert E. Lee Clayton: "Marlon made him a cross-dressing psychopath. Absent for the first hour of the movie, Clayton enters on horseback, dangling upside down, caparisoned in white buckskin, Littlefeather-style.

He speaks in an Irish accent for no apparent reason. Over the next hour, also for no apparent reason, Clayton assumes the intonation of a British upper-class twit and an elderly frontier woman, complete with a granny dress and matching bonnet. Penn, who believed in letting actors do their thing, indulged Marlon all the way. In , Brando narrated the English version of Raoni , a French-Belgian documentary film directed by Jean-Pierre Dutilleux and Luiz Carlos Saldanha that focused on the life of Raoni Metuktire and issues surrounding the survival of the Indigenous tribes in north central Brazil.

Brando portrayed Superman 's father Jor-El in the film Superman. He agreed to the role only on assurance that he would be paid a large sum for what amounted to a small part, that he would not have to read the script beforehand, and that his lines would be displayed somewhere off-camera. Brando also filmed scenes for the movie's sequel, Superman II , but after producers refused to pay him the same percentage he received for the first movie, he denied them permission to use the footage.

Brando starred as Colonel Walter E. He plays a highly decorated U. Army Special Forces officer who goes renegade, running his own operation based in Cambodia and is feared by the U. The film drew attention for its lengthy and troubled production, as Eleanor Coppola 's documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse details: Brando showed up on the set overweight, Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack, and severe weather destroyed several expensive sets.

The film's release was also postponed several times while Coppola edited millions of feet of footage. In the documentary, Coppola talks about how astonished he was when an overweight Brando turned up for his scenes and, feeling desperate, decided to portray Kurtz, who appears emaciated in the original story, as a man who had indulged every aspect of himself, with Coppola commentating that "He was already heavy when I hired him and he promised me that he was going to get in shape and I imagined that I would, if he were heavy, I could use that.

But he was so fat, he was very, very shy about it He was very, very adamant about how he didn't want to portray himself that way. And Francis and Marlon would be talking about the character and whole days would go by. And this is at Marlon's urging—and yet he's getting paid for it. Upon release, Apocalypse Now earned critical acclaim, as did Brando's performance.

His whispering of Kurtz's final words "The horror! The horror! Roger Ebert , writing in the Chicago Sun-Times , defended the movie's controversial denouement, opining that the ending, "with Brando's fuzzy, brooding monologues and the final violence, feels much more satisfactory than any conventional ending possibly could. After appearing as oil tycoon Adam Steiffel in 's The Formula , which was poorly received critically, Brando announced his retirement from acting.

Brando agreed to do the film for free, but fell out with director Euzhan Palcy over how the film was edited; he even made a rare television appearance in an interview with Connie Chung to voice his disapproval. In his memoir, he maintained that Palcy "had cut the picture so poorly, I thought, that the inherent drama of this conflict was vague at best.

Brando scored enthusiastic reviews for his caricature of his Vito Corleone role as Carmine Sabatini in 's The Freshman. In his original review, Roger Ebert wrote, "There have been a lot of movies where stars have repeated the triumphs of their parts—but has any star ever done it more triumphantly than Marlon Brando does in The Freshman?

Moreau in which he won a "Worst Supporting Actor" Raspberry , and his barely recognizable appearance in Free Money , resulted in some of the worst reviews of his career. The Island of Dr. Moreau screenwriter Ron Hutchinson would later say in his memoir, Clinging to the Iceberg: Writing for a Living on the Stage and in Hollywood , that Brando sabotaged the film's production by feuding and refusing to cooperate with his colleagues and the film crew.

Unlike its immediate predecessors, Brando's last completed film, The Score , was received generally positively. In the film, in which he portrays a fence , he starred with Robert De Niro. Brando conceived the novel with director Donald Cammell in , but it was not released until Brando's notoriety, his troubled family life and his obesity attracted more attention than his later acting career.

He gained a great deal of weight in the s; by the early-to-mids, he weighed over pounds kg and suffered from Type 2 diabetes. He had a history of weight fluctuation throughout his career that, by and large, he attributed to his years of stress-related overeating, followed by compensatory dieting. He also earned a reputation for being difficult on the set, often unwilling or unable to memorize his lines and less interested in taking direction than in confronting the film director with odd demands.

He also dabbled with some innovation in his last years. He had several patents issued in his name from the U. Patent and Trademark Office , all of which involve a method of tensioning drumheads , between June and November for example, see U. In , Brando recorded voice tracks for the character Mrs. Sour in the unreleased animated film Big Bug Man.

This was his last role and his only role as a female character. Brando also participated in the singer's two-day solo career 30th-anniversary celebration concerts in and starred in his minute-long music video " You Rock My World ", in the same year. Brando's son Miko was Jackson's bodyguard and assistant for several years and was a friend of the singer.

He had a hour chef, hour security, hour help, hour kitchen, hour maid service. Just carte blanche. For that I will always be indebted to him. Dad had a hard time breathing in his final days and he was on oxygen much of the time. He loved the outdoors, so Michael would invite him over to Neverland. Dad could name all the trees there and the flowers, but being on oxygen it was hard for him to get around and see them all, it's such a big place.

So Michael got Dad a golf cart with a portable oxygen tank so he could go around and enjoy Neverland. They'd just drive around—Michael Jackson, Marlon Brando, with an oxygen tank in a golf cart. He also suffered from diabetes and liver cancer. Brando recorded only one line due to his health and an impersonator was hired to finish his lines.

His single recorded line was included within the final game as a tribute to the actor. Some additional lines from his character were directly lifted from the film. A distressed Brando told Malden he kept falling over. Malden wanted to come over, but Brando put him off, telling him there was no point. Three weeks later, Brando was dead. Shortly before his death, he had apparently refused permission for tubes carrying oxygen to be inserted into his lungs, which, he was told, was the only way to prolong his life.

Brando was cremated and his ashes were put in with those of Wally Cox. Brando was known for his tumultuous personal life, his poor treatment of women, and his large number of partners and children. New York: Harper Collins Publishers , Grobel, Lawrence. Cooper Square Press Rat Press, Judge, Bernard. New York: Crown, Pendergast, Tom and Sara.

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Marlon brando biography imdb

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