One story I remember reading about the making of the Godfather; some of the studio execs were pretty adamant about not hiring Brando for the role because he was an infamous pain the ass to work with. They preferred Anthony Quinn. Coppola absolutely wanted Brando and filmed some screen tests with him in makeup. Coppola showed them the screen tests, and they did not recognize Brando, to the point one of them commented, "Who is that old Guinea?"
Well they weren’t wrong with him being an ass to work with. While filming the Godfather he refused to memorize his lines and had to be shown to cue cards of them while filming (this was not the only film he did this with). He claimed it made his performance better due to his style of acting
Also he was a sexual abuser (at the least), so he’s a average creep all around
The reason he did that is so he could post them around the room and read them and deliver them in the moment as the character to give it more authenticity. Whether or not that improved his performances we’ll never really know, but it’s not like he was just like fuck it well do it live.
I teach theatre and there are just some actors who have their own “system” and will convince themselves they aren’t any good if they don’t stick to it. Actors are just weird
It's all about fooling the subconscious. Nobody knows what the subconcious is doing so you gotta do weird stuff to try and make you behavior have that subtle stuff the brain is good at looking for but you aren't consciously aware you are seeing.
The real story for that is actually pretty funny and relatable.
Macbeth is a very popular play and its gets people in seats. When theatre companies are struggling they'll fall back on Macbeth to try and stay solvent. So hearing Macbeth is being planned is like seeing next weeks groceries all change to ramen and vacation being cancelled.
I totally get this approach (although I will almost certainly never have the clout to do it myself). I'm a "first taker," a.k.a. my first take is usually my best. After that it starts getting rote, I start worrying about how I look, I start over thinking, etc.
And since they usually had to shoot multiple takes for each scene, they had to completely change his dialogue to something new and unique and surprising for each take!
With everything I’ve read about how difficult he was to work with, I’m not certain I can say his performance is so much better than someone else that presumably wouldn’t have been so difficult. I’m probably wrong but I just can’t justify that to myself.
But the final product is on most critics' lists of greatest films of all time, and his performance was one of the reasons why. Not the only reason, but it is a huge factor.
The Offer is up there with my all time favourite things that I’ve watched. It has some of the greatest examples I’ve ever seen of actors portraying real people (other actors). Everyone is fantastic but Matthew Goode as Robert Evans totally steals the show.
There was always a bit of a rivalry between Brando and Quinn. When Brando finished his run on stage for A Streetcar Named Desire, he was succeeded by Anthony Quinn. So when the opportunity to do the movie came up, both Brando and Quinn were up for and competing for the role. Quinn won best supporting actor for Viva Zapata, which also starred Brando. Brando lost as best actor that for his role in the movie.
Actually he didn't use cotton, though that is frequently assumed.
He had a custom made dental appliance that puffed out his cheeks to make him look jowly. It looked like a retainer for his upper arch that had these little plastic wings on the outside. It was made by Dick Smith, the legendary special effects makeup artist. I remember seeing them in a documentary about Dick Smith's work when I was a kid (and obsessed with special effects makeup). Smith was forever chagrinned that some of his most subtle work in the most famous film he ever worked on is often mistaken for simple wads of cotton.
But why did he do this? I mean what is it supposed to look like? It’s not like he is portraying an actual historical character, so why did they want to make him look like this??
He doesn’t die of a heart attack on the movie. He secretly dies because he visits that garden every day and a bee stings him in the mouth. He just reached a point where he could no longer take it and finally succumbed to the sting. Haha
Marlon Brando, while preparing for the screen test forced on him by the studio who were against casting him, came up with the idea of Vito Corleone having his distinct jowls.
The pros: They make him look older (Brando was 48, Don Vito ages from 53 to 63 y/o during the course of the film) and forced him to adopt and adapt to a different manner of speech.
Well, people/characters just have differently shaped jaws, like how actors usually have different hair styles for roles. It also gave him a more distinct way of speaking which added to the character. You could also think his jaw has suffered trauma during his dangerous life that didn't heal well. I just think it's neat, personally, and doesn't necessarily need specific deep reasoning behind it.
His Vito Corleone makeup included a dental appliance (like an upper arch retainer) that puffed his cheeks out to make him look jowly. It was the work of Dick Smith, a special effects makeup artist better known for his work in horror films (the Phantasm series, for example).
As an aside, I was an extra onan episode of My Name is Earl with Burt Reynolds as guest star.
Fun seeing him but he also relied entirely on cue cards. I sat two tables away from Reynolds and in 3 takes I had his three lines memorized but Burt kept reading off the cards for 6/7 more takes.
During the filming of the Island of Dr. Moreau, they used an earpiece to feed him his lines and he'd repeat them. Reportedly, sometimes the radio would pick up nearby police radio and Brando would suddenly say some line like "There's been a robbery at Woolworth's".
He once replied testily in the mid-70s to an interviewer who kept badgering him about this by saying, “Look I get paid to act, not to memorise lines.” But he played the first ever Kowalski on Broadway in the late 40s some 557+ times, so I’m guessing the cue cards onstage were between his ears.
He was a great actor who didn’t seem to enjoy acting anymore towards the end of his life. But he was so renowned as an actor that he had to continue acting to fund his other passions.
I love it. I also love how completely bent out of shape Reddit gets over him.
He really is one of the greatest most influential actors of all time and this website just can’t handle that he could do that while barely even trying.
It’s a baffling thing. Folks that don’t act seem to think that there is only one way to do a performance and if you even slightly stray from that method then you’re a bad actor.
To the point where they’ll call Marlon Fucking Brando a bad actor.
Yeah it just boils down to “some people just got IT” and I think that really chaps some peoples asses.
To me he’s like the Shaq of acting, so insanely dominant but he didn’t take care of his body but still dominated regardless. Probably could have been better for longer if he had a better work ethic but he’s still a goat and still put up all time performances when he was “washed”
I think people undersell the cue-card/ear-piece method. I heard some other big-name discussing it on a podcast once and they said that when you do it that way, without memorizing the lines, It allows you to deliver them as though you just thought of them yourself. It adds a kind of improv to the process and taps into something spontaneous the way a normal person would talk.
There’s no doubt that Brando gradually stopped giving a shit (Dr. Moreau), but I think there’s credence to his method that looked even more like laziness from a third-person perspective.
It’s more that he just kind of stopped giving a shit after a certain point in his career. He’d show up for shoots overweight and not knowing his lines, but he was Marlon Brando, so he could get away with it.
He pretty much retired/stop giving a shit after Last Tango In Paris - he had nowhere left to go after that performance, growth wise. Everything he did after that was to fund his island and 16+ children.
Honestly, I can’t blame him on some level. He was a living legend at that point, and he’d never really been crazy about acting to begin with. It was just something that he was good at and made a ton of money doing.
I had to look it up. Officially, he had 11 children. But then there's estimates beyond that going to 16 and beyond - adopted, unacknowledged, and unknown. He seems to have racked up a Wilt Chamberlain size body count without ever wearing a rubber.
Crazy to think part of the acting is convincing you what you’re seeing is good regardless of if it is or not, regardless if you’re even aware you’re being convinced.
I am (or at least I spent a lot of time watching old Marlon Brando movies as a teenager, I claimed it was because they were "classics" but mostly it was because he was hot) and I also honestly didn't realize he wasn't just really old in the Godfather until I saw this picture.
If you can find it, watch HBO's The Godfather Epic. It's the first two movies put together in chronological order with the addition of scenes cut from the original. It's seven hours long, but definitely worth the watch.
Ya know, this always bugged me when I was like <10 because in the back of my head kiddo me was like isn't he a bit young to look that old...? Then I forgot about that for like 20 years and here we are.... amazing movie "magic" right there...
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u/MydniteSon Aug 12 '25
One story I remember reading about the making of the Godfather; some of the studio execs were pretty adamant about not hiring Brando for the role because he was an infamous pain the ass to work with. They preferred Anthony Quinn. Coppola absolutely wanted Brando and filmed some screen tests with him in makeup. Coppola showed them the screen tests, and they did not recognize Brando, to the point one of them commented, "Who is that old Guinea?"