Marlon Brando: An Icon

This was a man who jumped to a cause when it wasn't deemed "fashionable" by Hollywood standards. Not just a pretty boy onscreen his acting abilities and his extraordinary contrast on and off camera could be found in the causes he embraced and the movies he immersed himself in. Whether it be for the Civil Rights movements or his protests regarding the Cold War Marlon was a complex man.

Brando changed modern acting by popularizing "the Method," a technique which emphasized emotional truth and naturalistic style. Brando was a smash hit on Broadway in A Streetcar Named Desire in 1947; in the early 1950s he was nominated in four consecutive years for best actor Oscars, winning once for the 1954 film On the Waterfront. (He was also nominated as Marc Antony in 1953's Julius Caesar, for playing Emiliano Zapata in 1952's Viva Zapata!, and for the 1951 film version of Streetcar.) In the 1970s Brando became hot all over again, winning a second Oscar for playing Mafia kingpin Don Corleone in The Godfather. In later years Brando became famous for his reclusiveness and Orson Welles-like girth. His last feature film was the 2001 heist thriller The Score, in which he was paired with Method-trained actors from two younger generations: Robert DeNiro and Edward Norton.