Mr Marlon Brando was one of the 20th-century’s foremost cultural icons, a brilliant yet troubled man who remains an endless source of fascination more than a decade on from his death. As an actor, he was possessed of perhaps the greatest natural talent of his generation – a talent that shone brightly in films such as On the Waterfront, but was diluted by numerous cinematic failures. Off-screen, he was just as unpredictable: he shunned the limelight, scorned the cult of celebrity and was often openly contemptuous of Hollywood. His reputation as a difficult and demanding actor was hardly enhanced by his almost total refusal to give interviews, and his terse, defensive manner on the few occasions that he did.
Born in 1924 in Omaha, Nebraska, the third child of Mr Marlon Brando Sr and his wife Dorothy, Mr Brando’s Midwestern upbringing must have looked to an outsider like a classic vignette of the American Dream. But beneath the glossy, oil-painting surface, there were cracks. His father was domineering and abusive, his mother an alcoholic. They were separated by the time he was 11. After being expelled from military academy at the age of 18 he decided to follow his two older sisters to New York to study acting at the New School, where he was greatly influenced by his teacher, Ms Stella Adler. Her instruction of “Method” acting was instrumental to Mr Brando’s early success as an actor, first as the brooding Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire and then later in his Oscar-winning turn in On the Waterfront.