Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando, the Wild One, 1954.
Photograph by Phil Stern

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Marlon Brando, Jr. (April 3, 1924 – July 1, 2004) was an American actor who performed for over half a century.
He was perhaps best known for his role as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).  During the 1970s, he was most famous for his Academy Award-winning performance as Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972), also playing Colonel Walter Kurtz in another Coppola film, Apocalypse Now (1979).

Brando had a significant impact on film acting, and was the foremost example of the "method" acting style. While he became notorious for his "mumbling" diction his performances were nonetheless highly regarded, and he is considered one of the greatest and most influential actors of the 20th century. Director Martin Scorsese said of him, "He is the marker. There's 'before Brando' and 'after Brando'."