Marlon Brando by Gary Saderup
Marlon Brando, Jr. (April 3, 1924 – July 1, 2004) was an American actor, film director and political activist. He is credited with bringing realism to film acting. He helped to popularize the Stanislavski system of acting, studying with Stella Adler in the 1940s.
Brando is widely known for his Academy Award-winning performances as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (1954) and Vito Corleone in The Godfather (1972), as well as his performances in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Viva Zapata! (1952), Julius Caesar (1953), The Wild One (1953), Guys and Dolls (1955), Sayonara (1957), Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), Last Tango in Paris (1972), and Apocalypse Now (1979).
Brando was also an activist for many causes, notably the Civil Rights Movement and various Native American movements.
Brando was ranked by the American Film Institute as the fourth-greatest movie star among male movie stars whose screen debuts occurred in or before 1950. He was one of only three professional actors, along with Charlie Chaplin and Marilyn Monroe, named in 1999 by Time magazine as one of its 100 Most Important People of the Century. He died of respiratory failure on July 1, 2004, at age 80.
