Marlon Brando

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Steve Hanson

Brando's social sympathies can be seen in his own life as well. For example he had an American Indian woman pick up his second Oscar for the Godfather and make some remarks about the treatment of native Americans in the United States. He lives outside of the Hollywood milieu, sometimes in the South Pacific working on environmental concerns, other times in the San Fernando Valley. He works only infrequently and expresses a disdain for the type of material currently being produced in Hollywood, although he does emerge every so often for outrageous sums of money if a role that interests him presents itself. He usually imbues these characters with qualities and social concerns that were not in the original scripts and tends to play them a bit "over the top" (see Superman [1978] and Apocalypse Now [1979]). Yet, he is also not above poking fun at himself as he did in 1990's The Freshman, in which he reprised his Don Corleone role, albeit in a satirical manner.

Marlon Brando is one of the few actors of his generation whose entire body of work--both good performances and those of lesser impact--reflect his social concerns, his celebration of the downtrodden, and his examination of the nature of man and the exercise of power. In this respect, he is a true auteur in every sense of the word, shading all of his portrayals with the contradictions inherent in the individual and in society itself. As Mark Kram stated in a November, 1989, Esquire article: "there are people who, when they cease to shock us, cease to interest us. Brando no longer shocks, yet, he continues to be of perennial interest, some of it because of what he did on film, some of it because he resists definition, and maybe mostly because he rejects, by his style of living and his attitudes, much of what we are about as a nation and people. He seems to have glided into the realm of folk mystery, the kind that fires attempts at solution."