Marlon Brando American Actor Known for The Godfather

Marlon Brando Jr. was an American stage and film actor, born in Omaha, Nebraska, on 3 April 1924. He died on 1 July 2004. His screen work ran from 1950 into the 2000s, and he was among the performers who brought a naturalistic style to American film.

Early life

Brando was the only son of Marlon Brando Sr., a salesman, and Dorothy Pennebaker, a stage actress, and he had two older sisters, Jocelyn and Frances. The family moved to Evanston, Illinois, in 1930, and later settled on a farm near Libertyville, Illinois. He did well at sports and drama at Libertyville High School but poorly in other subjects, and he was expelled in 1941. His father then sent him to Shattuck Military Academy, which he left in 1943 after a disciplinary dispute.

Brando followed his sisters to New York and studied at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School under the director Erwin Piscator. He also became a student of Stella Adler, from whom he learned the Stanislavski system. Although he is often described as a method actor, he rejected that label and credited Adler and, later, Elia Kazan rather than the teaching at the Actors Studio.

Career

Brando's first summer stock roles came in Sayville, New York, and in 1944 he made his Broadway debut in I Remember Mama. He received Theatre World Awards in 1946 for his work in Candida and Truckline Cafe. In 1947 he originated the role of Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway.

He appeared in his first film, The Men, in 1950, playing a wounded soldier. In 1951 he repeated the Kowalski role in the screen adaptation of Streetcar, directed by Kazan. The 1950s that followed brought Viva Zapata! (1952), in which he played Emiliano Zapata, Julius Caesar (1953), in which he was Mark Antony, and The Wild One (1953), where he played the motorcycle gang leader Johnny Strabler. He played dockworker Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (1954), and was also cast in Guys and Dolls (1955) and Sayonara (1957). In 1961 he directed and starred in the western One-Eyed Jacks, his directorial debut, and in 1962 he played Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty.

In the early 1970s he took two of his most widely documented roles. In The Godfather (1972) he played the crime family head Vito Corleone, and in Last Tango in Paris (1972) he took a lead part. He played Jor-El in Superman (1978) and Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (1979). On television he won a Primetime Emmy Award for supporting work in the miniseries Roots: The Next Generations (1979), after which he stepped away from acting for nine years. Later credits include The Freshman (1990), Don Juan DeMarco (1995), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) and The Score (2001), his final film. The Superman Returns (2006) and I Am Not Your Negro (2016) credits in his record came after his death.

Recognition

Brando received seven Academy Award nominations for Best Actor, for A Streetcar Named Desire, Viva Zapata!, Julius Caesar, On the Waterfront, Sayonara, The Godfather and Last Tango in Paris, along with a Best Supporting Actor nomination for A Dry White Season. He won the Oscar for Best Actor twice, for On the Waterfront and The Godfather, and in each case also received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama. Along with the Emmy for Roots: The Next Generations, he holds three BAFTA Awards and a Cannes Film Festival award, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Personal life

Brando was married three times: to Anna Kashfi from 1957 to 1959, to Movita Castaneda from 1960 to 1968, and to Tarita Teriipaia from 1962 to 1972. He had six children in total. Those named in his biography records include Christian Brando, Cheyenne Brando and Stephen Blackehart.