MARLON BRANDO: THE MAN BEHIND THE LEGEND HOLLYWOOD CREATED

Marlon Brando was born on April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, in a house where genius and chaos coexisted in the same room. His mother, Dorothy, was a vibrant and bohemian woman with a dangerous inclination towards alcohol. His father, a successful yet womanizing salesman, treated him with cruel indifference, which shaped the boy into a rebel. "He was a brat with a license," Brando would recall years later.

As a child, he was called ‘Bud’. His world revolved around his mother, whom he loved devotedly, while at the same time, he sought her out in the shadows of their home when her drunkenness pulled her away from the family. Brando’s childhood was marked by this contradiction: the search for love and the need to escape from it. Even in school, his rebellious spirit manifested without restrictions. "I was the bad kid in class," he admitted, recalling it with some satisfaction.

When his father grew tired of his defiant attitude, he sent him to the Shattuck Military Academy in Minnesota, thinking that discipline would straighten him out. But Brando was not to be tamed. He sabotaged the school with pranks that bordered on vandalism and was eventually expelled. Aimless, he ended up in New York with his sister, and it was there that life presented him with the one place where his chaos made sense: the theater.

In 1943, he entered the New School for Social Research, where his natural magnetism was already evident. "He laughed at all of us," recalled his classmate Elaine Stritch. But what made him transcend was the teaching of Stella Adler, the woman who showed him that acting was not just a profession but a way of existing. Adler saw in him a raw talent capable of molding emotion into art. She was the one who taught him how to control his inner fire without smothering it.

Broadway welcomed him with open arms. In 1944, his role in I Remember Mama caught the attention of Hollywood. But he still wasn’t ready for the lights of cinema. He still wanted to laugh at everything. When he portrayed Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), something changed. He was an unstoppable force, a wild animal on stage, and the big screen soon claimed him. Hollywood turned him into a myth, but Brando never allowed himself to be tamed.

In the 1950s, he became the most electrifying actor of his generation. His work in films like Viva Zapata! (1952), Julius Caesar (1953), and especially On the Waterfront (1954), where his desperate scream of "I coulda been a contender!" became a lament for an entire generation, solidified him as a living legend. James Caan summed it up after his death: "The best." He won his first Oscar for that role. Elia Kazan, his director, said that Brando could be at the bottom of the emotional abyss and, seconds later, light up the scene with an irreplaceable spark.

But fame didn’t bring him happiness. His personal life was a whirlwind of chaos, fleeting loves, and tragedies. He married three times and had eleven recognized children. However, his love life went far beyond his marriages. Rita Moreno, with whom he had an intense relationship for eight years, said that Brando was as fascinating as he was destructive. "He made me feel like a goddess and garbage at the same time," confessed the actress. He had an intermittent romance with Marilyn Monroe, a brief and volcanic passion with Ursula Andress, and an "unforgettable and dangerous" affair with Jackie Collins, as the novelist described it. With Tarita Teriipaia, whom he met during the filming of Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), he had Cheyenne, his tormented daughter, whose tragic life would forever mark the actor.

While accumulating awards and legendary roles, he also accumulated scandals. On sets, Brando became increasingly unpredictable. In Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), he despised Elizabeth Taylor for being physically inferior. In The Countess from Hong Kong (1967), he mocked Sophia Loren, saying her breath was "worse than a dinosaur’s." His contempt for the industry's norms was total. He demanded absurd conditions and earned fortunes. For Superman (1978), he asked for seven million dollars for just seven minutes on screen, without even memorizing his script, which was read to him off-camera.

But amid all this madness, he also left an eternal mark. In The Godfather (1972), his portrayal of Vito Corleone is considered one of the greatest in history. He regained his throne as a mythical actor, but on his own terms. When he won the Oscar for that role, he publicly rejected it, sending Native American activist Sacheen Littlefeather to read a speech on his behalf, denouncing Hollywood’s racism toward Native Americans. The gesture generated boos, headlines, and controversy, but Brando never apologized. "They weren’t booing me. They were booing because I ruined their fantasy with a little reality," he said afterward.

During the 1980s, his health began to deteriorate, and his figure became more elusive. He acted on rare occasions, like in The Freshman (1990), and his presence was more of a specter than a legend. He lived reclusively on his personal paradise: Tetiaroa, a private island in Tahiti that he had bought decades earlier and turned into his refuge. There, he found a moment of peace by the ocean and, as he said, the only place where no one asked him to be Marlon Brando. Today, the island is an exclusive resort, The Brando, where millionaires seek what he longed for his entire life: silence.

But even there, he couldn’t escape pain. In 1990, his son Christian killed Cheyenne’s boyfriend, Dag Drollet, at Brando's house on Mulholland Drive. The trial became a media scandal. Brando cried in court, blamed himself, and broke down before the world. Cheyenne, devastated, spiraled into depression. In 1995, she took her own life. Brando never wrote about it. Not a single line. Perhaps because, even as a master of emotion, he didn’t know how to put words to the deepest pain.

His last notable appearance in film was in The Score (2001), alongside Robert De Niro and Edward Norton. He was no longer the titan of before. He was a shadow with a deep voice and melancholic eyes. He died on July 1, 2004, at the age of 80, from pulmonary fibrosis. His body was cremated, and his ashes were scattered on his island in Tetiaroa and alongside those of his friend Wally Cox, with whom he shared an intimate relationship that many believe was more than friendship.

His films live on. His scenes are studied by actors who dream of being half of what he was. His name always appears among the greatest, among the indispensable. Jack Nicholson described him as follows: "He was unpredictable. He could destroy you or make you feel like the most important person in the world in one second." On set, he was untamable, but in his personal life, the chaos was even greater.

In his memoirs, Brando wrote: "I finally feel free, and I don’t care what people think of me." Maybe it was true. Maybe, on his island, watching the waves, he found the peace that eluded him in life. Or maybe, like everything in Brando, it was just another of his masterful lies. Because if there’s one thing Marlon Brando was, beyond actor, star, or legend, it was a mystery: deep, chaotic, and fiercely human.