Marlon Brando, Jr. (April 3, 1924 – July 1, 2004) was an Academy Award-winning American actor whose body of work spanned over half a century. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential actors of all time. Brando is best known for his roles in A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront, both directed by Elia Kazan in the early 1950s, and his Academy-Award winning performance as Vito Corleone in The Godfather and as Colonel Walter E. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, the latter two directed by Francis Ford Coppola in the 1970s.
Brando was also an activist, lending his presence to many issues, including the American Civil Rights and American Indian Movements. He was named the fourth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute.
Brando was born to Marlon Brando Sr. (1895–1965) and Dorothy Pennebaker Brando (1897-1954) in Omaha, Nebraska. In 1935, when he was 11 years old, his parents separated. His mother briefly took her three children (Marlon, Jocelyn (1919–2005) and Frances Brando (1922-1994) to live with her mother in Santa Ana, California, until 1937 when the parents reconciled and moved to Libertyville, Illinois, a village northwest of Chicago. The family was primarily of Dutch, Irish, German, Huguenot and English stock.
Brando became known as much for his crusades for civil rights, Native American rights and other political causes as he was for his acting. He also earned a "bad boy" reputation for his public outbursts and antics. In June 1973, Brando broke paparazzo Ron Galella's jaw. His hand became infected as a result. In the following year, Galella wore a football helmet when snapping photos of Brando.
Brando played Jor-El, Superman's father, in Superman. He agreed to the role only on assurance that he was paid a large sum for what amounted to a small part, that he did not have to read the script beforehand and his lines would be displayed somewhere off-camera.
Brando also filmed scenes for the movie's sequel, Superman II, but the producers refused to pay him the percentage he was paid for the first movie, so he denied them permission to use the footage. However, after Brando's death the footage was re-incorporated into the 2006 re-cut of the film, Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut.
Two years after his death, he "reprised" the role of Jor-El in the 2006 "loose sequel" Superman Returns, in which both used and unused archive footage of Brando as Jor-El from the first two Superman films was remastered for a scene in the Fortress of Solitude, as well as Brando's voice-overs being used throughout the film.
He made a much stronger impression in 1951 when he brought his performance as Stanley Kowalski to the screen in Kazan's adaptation of Streetcar. He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for that role, and again in each of the next three years for his roles in Viva Zapata! in 1952, Julius Caesar in 1953 as Mark Antony, and On the Waterfront in 1954. These first five films of his career established Brando as perhaps the premier acting talent in the world, as evidenced in his winning the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role three consecutive years, 1951 to 1953.
Some later performances, such as The Island of Dr Moreau, earned him some of the most uncomplimentary reviews of his career. Despite announcing his retirement from acting in 1980, he subsequently gave interesting supporting performances in movies such as A Dry White Season (for which he was again nominated for an Oscar in 1989), The Freshman in 1990 and Don Juan DeMarco in 1995. In 1992 Tim Burton offered Marlon Brando the role of the Penguin in Batman Returns; Brando accepted but Warner Bros. rejected the decision. In his last film, The Score (2001), he starred with fellow method actor Robert De Niro.
Brando conceived the idea of a novel called Fan-Tan with director Donald Cammell in 1979, which was not released until 2005. Interestingly, Cammell dated and eventually married the daughter of one of Brando's girlfriends, Anita Loo (aka Anita Kong), China Kong.
