Marlon Brando Jr. was an American actor who was born on April 3, 1924 and died on July 1, 2004. Considered one of the twentieth century’s most influential actors, he received numerous honors during his six-decade career, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, one Cannes Film Festival Award, and three British Academy Film Awards. Brando was also an activist for a variety of causes, most notably the civil rights and Native American movements.
He is credited with being one of the first actors to bring the Stanislavski system of acting and method acting to mainstream audiences, having studied with Stella Adler in the 1940s.
Distracted by his personal life and disillusioned with his career, Brando began to see acting as merely a means to an end. Critics were outraged when he began accepting roles in films that many saw as beneath his talent, or when he failed to live up to the better roles. Previously only signing short-term deals with film studios, Brando signed a five-picture deal with Universal Studios in 1961, which would haunt him for the rest of the decade.
The first of these movies was The Ugly American (1963). Based on Pennebaker’s optioned 1958 novel of the same name, the film, which starred Brando’s sister Jocelyn, received generally positive reviews but bombed at the box office.
Brando was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance. All of Brando’s other Universal films during this time period, including Bedtime Story (1964), The Appaloosa (1966), A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), and The Night of the Following Day (1969), were critical and commercial flops.
Brando had hoped to work with one of his heroes, director Charlie Chaplin, on Countess. Brando was horrified by Chaplin’s didactic style of direction and his authoritarian approach. Brando had previously appeared in the spy thriller Morituri in 1965, which also failed to find an audience.
Marlon Brando parents: Meet Marlon Brando, Sr., Dodie Brando
Brando was born on April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, to Marlon Brando Sr. (1895-1965), a pesticide and chemical feed manufacturer, and Dorothy Julia Pennebaker (1897–1954). Jocelyn (1919-2005) and Frances (1919-2005) were Brando’s elder sisters (1922–1994). His ancestors were mostly German, Dutch, English, and Irish.
