Hollywood's Most Legendary Leading Man Would've Been 102 Today

Before the likes of Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and even Timothée Chalamet, one male actor dominated the silver screen: Marlon Brando.

Often considered one of the greatest actors of all time, Brando delivered career-defining performances in A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and The Godfather. He also starred in countless other popular movies, including Guys and Dolls, The Wild One, and Apocalypse Now. He even crossed over into TV with a role in the groundbreaking miniseries Roots: The Next Generations.

Brando is considered one of the pioneers of "method" acting, where actors don't just recite lines, but embody the characters they're playing. While most actors were annunciating every syllable of every word in their put-on transatlantic accents, Brando famously mumbled to convey his characters' discomfort. As film history YouTuber Nerdwriter noted, "Actors trained in theatrical techniques hit their spots, articulated their lines, and performed instantly legible emotions for the audience. They didn't pause a conversation to look under the table, turn their head away from the microphone in the process, and they certainly didn't speak while chewing food."

Brando single-handedly influenced an entire generation of actors to come. Edward Norton said on an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, "If you look at the 'great' generation of American actors like Dustin Hoffman, Robert DeNiro, Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, Al Pacino, Morgan Freeman, Meryl Streep, that’s all the post-Brando generation. All of them wanted to become actors because of Marlon Brando." He added, "He [Brando] changed the idea of the type of person male actors wanted to be. They to be visceral, not polished. They wanted to be muscular. They wanted to be masculine. They wanted to be intense. When you look back on Jimmy Stweart, Cary Grant, that is not what movie stars were aspiring to.”

Brando died in 2004 at the age of 80, but his legacy lives on.