The Actor Who Didn’t Care - Marlon Brando 

I heard a story from my acting teacher about how during an audition Marlon Brando and the actors were all told to act like farm animals. At one point the casting director said, "There's a bomb being dropped on top of you!" All the other actors ran and hollered but he just sat there. The casting director said, "What are you doing?" He looked up at her and said, "I'm a Chicken, I'm laying a Goddamn egg!" The director responded, "There's a bomb about to be dropped on your head!" And he said, "How the hell should I know? I'm a chicken."

To people who claim Brando to be lazy. I raise you Steven Seagal.

Fun Fact: Later in his life, Marlon Brando would go onto AOL chatrooms and start fights there, and was banned multiple times for cussing people off.

It’s crazy to imagine that the studios execs didn’t want Marlon Brando or Al Pacino cast in The Godfather.

The fact he got a fake native American to launch a tirade about how native Americans are portrayed is accidentally his most hilarious prank

A man who hated acting, had a bunch of flops, but enough hits to be remembered as an acting great

Marlon Brando turned into Eric Cartman as he aged I do what I want , one of the best ever no doubt ...

It's crazy to see early footage of him acting, really puts into perspective what a game changer he was with his style.

Well, Marlon is a typical example of how intelligent people are often lazy, never show their full potential, and yet somehow manage to do very well. Lazy or not, he was one of the greatest actors on screen for sure.

He wasn't the actor who didn't care; he was an actor of profound ambivalence. There's a difference. On the one hand, he cared deeply. For his role in The Men, he spent a month in a wheelchair in order to inhabit the chair in a fully organic way. Actors had rarely, if ever, gone to such lengths before. On the other hand, acting was just a joke to him. Simultaneously caring deeply and not caring at all was what made Brando so great. It's obvious what caring deeply contributed, but it's out of not giving a shit that he got his spontaneity, impulsiveness, FREEDOM.

Steven Seagal makes Marlon look like the most caring actor who was ever recorded on film

*Brando and Daniel Day-Lewis are similar in that both are natural masters of the craft yet both do not hold this craft in a high regard.* "It's just acting, it's not rocket science. We are not changing the world. It's just entertainment." This is very refreshing to most movie goers, as opposed to the weepy eyed piousness of the Hollywood crowd who seem to think that what they are doing is of earth-shattering importance. It may also be why Brando was the original 'Academy Awards Troll'. He couldn't help but make fun of the crowd that was jealous of how easily it came to him. He exposed their mediocrity to the world.

He’s brilliant in The Men. And Marlon is the reason behind Acting Unions and getting actors PAID….and all he did for human rights back before it was en vogue- I also got mad respect for this man.

I remember when he was alive reading about his on set and off set behaviour. I don't think an actor like him would be tolerated now or get any roles.

Acting came so naturally to him, he didn't care. The guys 2nd feature film got him a best actor nomination for goodness sake, and he literally INVENTED the style of acting we all love and enjoy today. He'd practically done it all so early, so fast, it's no wonder he got bored with it. He accomplished so much, so quick. Where else was he going to go from there?

The stories about apocalypse now always make me laugh. He was always gonna do what he wanted plain and simple. The man.

Marlon Brando and Edward Norton on the same set of The Score (2001) must have been chaos

Brando reminds me of the phrase "mistaking confidence for arrogance." He knew his worth

Once you realize that Brando's famous look-away is just him reading a cue card...IT still works!

Early Brando was a great actor w special talent, who got rich, fat & lazy.. The Elvis of cinema.

The most amazing thing is learning that Brando almost played the comedic preist from Scary Movie 2, and theres unreleased footage of it!

My theory isn’t that Marlon Brando didn’t care. I think he cared and felt too much. When you care and feel too much, you have to detach yourself and approach with an “f-you” or “I don’t care” attitude to handle the constant expectation of perfection one puts on oneself. There’s a reason he tried to eat most of his feelings away. When one feels too much and doesn’t know what to do with it or how to handle it, you can try numbing it with alcohol, drugs, money, sex, or food. I’m sure Marlon learned, like many others, you can never outrun or out-eat your feelings. Everybody can call Marlon Brando lazy and entitled, but when he really cared and DID his thing, he made every other actor feel like an amateur. There’s no doubt he’s one of the greatest.

He was fantastic as Colonel Kurtz. Despite how brief his role is, despite that he's in the dark it really did define a man who had crossed the threshold into madness.

It should be pointed out that when Brando was filming The Island of Dr Moreau, his daughter committed suicide. This tragedy may have affected him greatly, thus making his onset antics worse than before. Compounded by this personal tragedy was the fact that he was working with Val Kilmer, another actor with had his own reputation of being self centered and troublesome to work with. The two actors clashed on set many times.

Its a wonder his career lasted as long as it did. If someone were like him in this day and age now, they'd be out of a job very quickly.

I'd say Brando was an amazing actor but a very difficult human being. He was clearly very hard, even unprofessional, to work with.

There is method to the madness. In the drama school I went to we were thought that the less we cared and the less we attached ourself to the result the more free we become during the performance. Obviously there is a balance between caring and not caring. Brando done it perfectly.

If anyone gets the chance read his autobiography Songs my mother never taught me. It delves into his childhood obviously -but he had very deep rooted issues with his father. He describes his father as like Stanley - brutal. He clearly loved his mother but she was an alcoholic. However she was very creative and artistic. She set up a theatre company and a young Henry Fonda was part of it. However he was deeply taumatised by her alcoholism. However he had deep compassion for her.

Brando was gifted, but I believe his true love was life, not acting. I think he knew what was important and that acting was a means to do what he really wanted in life.

I would consider Brando a co-director on Apocalypse Now. He steered Coppola into insanity in a jungle, because he was insane and didn't care of he died in this jungle. And it produced an insane movie. The ending was supposed to be a battle scene with a romantic action filled death. I prefer the more psychological "horror".

Brando never disguised his contempt for the acting profession and it shows in both his choice of movies and his refusal to learn lines. He reminds me of a singer who puts out a great couple of albums and then coasts along singing cover versions.

I think Brando was the perfect example of Work smarter Not harder How much money was made of his immeasurable talent 😊

I legitimately love the idea Brando’s character in Dr. Moreau being revealed to be a dolphin in a human suit 😂

Even Brando’s so called lazy performances are masterpieces of acting compare to all the Sean Penns and Aflecks of the world.

I think his early acting was his best. The first time I saw On the Waterfront, I was blown away by his improvisation in scenes with Eva Marie Saint. It was so modern that it almost seemed out of place for the era.

His charisma was off the charts

i think The Last Tango in Paris section glossed over how negative that butter scene was for the costar maria schneider. i understand if it wasn’t covered because of monetization it’s a huge example of brando’s (as well as in this case the director’s) controversial on set behavior.

He literally did only what Anthony Hopkins told one beginning actor to do. "Learn your lines. Show up."

He does what he wants. In The Godfather, Brando found a stray cat in the studio parking lot, the cat followed him. Brando brought the cat to the set, he was told to put the cat away b/c the novel and the scene didnt have a cat in it. Brando refused, hence the cat in his hands and the affection the cat had for Brando.

I watched one eyed Jacks for the first time recently and I definitely noticed how good that wave looked...then I looked up the trivia and saw they waited for it. Yea it sounds a silly thing to do...but i DID notice how good the waves looked in that scene!

The film set should be considered a safe and healthy work environment. When your demands and behavior effect your coworkers it shouldn’t be tolerated.

No one usually knows what theyre gonna say before they say it... That is some serious insight into high level acting there

Brilliant! He wasn’t an actor, he was a sophisticated, real-life villain!

Burt Reynolds said to Marlon Brando I think you're a great actor and Brando said I wish I could say the same about you 😂

Something I got to respect about a guy who can simultaneously earn so many accolades and simultaneously kick shit and ngaf at the same time 😂

It’s not fair someone could be so talented and good at something while also completely not caring about it.

5:58 I will be honest, as someone who’s lived by the ocean my entire life, it’s a part of me. That wave is literally perfect and that shot is pure kino.

Marlon Brando also made his final appearance in the Michael Jackson music video "You Rock My World" which followed after The Score in the same year

Brando just didnt buy Hollwoods bullshit he was the ahead of the competition that it got boring for him i mean the guy used an Oscar as a door, in a movie filled with superstar actors (the Godfather and Apocalypse now) he (IMO) stole every scene he was in and he wasnt even trying, he just didnt a single shit and i honestly have to respect that RIP Marlon Brando the only actor who i think is better than DDL

This video leaves out Brando's fantastic performance as Mary Antony in Julius Caesar. According to John Gielgud, Brando had all of his lines memorized. I guess you can't fuck around with Shakespeare.

Your channel is so good! Keep with the good work :) Cheers from Brasil!

There's many very talented people who take it for granted don't care about it. No most of them are not marlon brando so he definitely had a mixture of luck and getting good roles but his influence is gigantic and undeniable, your favorite actors favorite actor.

I remember some interview with Werner Herzog and the subject of Marlon Brando came up and Herzog went off on a tangent about how he thought that Brando could never come close to Klaus Kinski when it came to "method acting." Although to be fair I don't believe Brando ever had to worry about his director shooting him dead, or members of his cast offering to do the same thing.

Great stuff as always!

He made a mr perfectionist Stanley Kubrick stepped down?? What a legend 😂

I totally forgot that Superman was made before Apocalypse Now. I don't consider Brando "lazy", but he wa definitely undisciplined. To be honest some of his pranks were pretty funny; the placing of weights under the gurney always makes me laugh during that scene in The Godfather, though I really wish he'd have come back for that flashback scene at the end of Godfather II, which would have made a near perfect film probably about as perfect as a film could be.

I understand all too well how it is to stop caring about the job when the job stops caring about you. RIP Mr. Brando 🍻

If anyone has never seen Burn! I highly recommend it. Possibly Brando’s greatest performance.

I hate people who make excuses for difficult, abusive, and weird behavior as if it goes hand in hand with quality. Quality is the opposite of abuse, it doesn't come from abuse.

People called Marlon Brando lazy but he is one of those actors who always puts effort into his character, he even plays many film genres such as musical, drama, comedy, Shakespeare etc. He has played both protagonist and antagonist roles. Don Vito physical appearance in the film Godfather was also his idea. A lazy actor is one who always plays the same role over and over again like actors nowadays.

Saw brando on an.old larry king show way after he was no longrr giving interviews and he said in his acting class he was told to just respect the feelings he would get while doing a part in a movie. He did that and always trusted his instincts. He was a genius and introduced a new acting style that changed movies. Brando was to acting what elvis was to music. These men were geniuses and innovative and honed their crafts at the same time

over the past 40 years, each decade saw a new actor be lauded as 'the Next Brando', and fans waited with bated breath for it to pan out. This decade, the nomination goes to Adam Driver... but after seeing this, I would say that for all that Adam's acting feels natural and his presence fills the set of every scene he's in... Adam's professionalism ensures he is in no way 'the New Brando'.

It should be pointed out that Later in Brando's career - he never sought out roles. Directors and Producers were the ones that begged him to be in their movies...

He was actually offered to play the hobo on the train in The Polar Express. According to Eddie Deezan who played the Know-It-All kid Tom Hanks was very close with Marlon Brando and Tom asked Brando if he could come in for one day to do his scenes. Unfortunately he was too sick to do it. That would’ve been awesome to see and it could’ve been his only kids/family movie ever

He was a fascinating person. Watch his interview with Connie Chung

Marlon Brando was a very interesting mixed actor unlike any other! You have great respect for his craft and personal charm, and at same time you grind your teeths out of frustration you can't get him to do what you envision in the movie or that he creates drama with his co-actors. A perfect example of Brando is his work with Francis Ford Coppola's award classic Apocalypse Now (1979). BTW, Brando was paid $1 million a week for just 3 weeks work. Brando was the movie's "central character" Colonel Walter Kurtz, a highly decorated US Army Special Forces officer who goes rogue. He runs his own military unit based in Cambodia and is feared as much by the U.S. military as by the North Vietnamese, Viet Cong and Khmer Rouge. His character is ordered to be executed by Martin Sheen's character U.S. Army Captain Benjamin L. Willard, a veteran assassin who is serving his third tour in Vietnam. The whole movie the audience is from time-to-time told about this "mythical" Col. Kurtz and how/why things came to be at same time the audience get a heavy insight of the brutal Vietnam War. Marlon Brando was paid $1 million in advance. He threatened to quit and keep the advance... Brando showed up on the set overweight, and despite it was in his contract a demand to be in representble shape in line with a Vietnam War commander, Brando gave rats-@ss to do even e decent work of that. Coppola was astonished how overweight Brando turned up for his scenes and, feeling desperate, decided to portray Kurtz, who appears emaciated in the original story, as a man who had indulged every aspect of himself. He was so fat (not trying to shame, but point out the problem for the role) and he was very, very shy about it ... He was very, very adamant about how he didn't want to portray himself that way. Further how Brando had not read the book, Heart of Darkness, as the director Coppola had instructed him to to doo OR read his lines. - Coppola spent several days reading Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" out loud to Marlon Brando on the set. After several days of arguments over single lines of dialogue, Coppola agreed to an ad-lib style script, with Brando filmed mostly in shadows. Marlon Brando improvised a lot of Kurtz's dialogue, including an 18-minute speech, two minutes of which survived the final cut. Some of it was incoherent, most of it was great. At the end of the speech, Brando said to Coppola, "Francis, I've gone as far as I can go. If you need more, you can get another actor." During filming, Dennis Hopper and Marlon Brando did not get along, leading Brando to plain out refuse to be on the set at the same time as Hopper = something we seen Brando doo in other movies when butting heads. Marlon Brando so angered Francis Ford Coppola that Coppola turned over the filming of Brando's scenes to assistant director Jerry Ziesmer!

I think he did care at the beginning but as time went on he became so disillusioned with the way hollywood operates, I can’t blame him really.

The first major study on dyslexia was done in the early 70s, before then people were just "stupid and lazy". That Brando had such a career despite his disability was his greatest prank of all.

The fact he told the Director of Superman he had to do all scenes in 1 take to "grasp and perform as an actor of his prestige". Marlon Brando was there for about 4 weeks while the people on set, most actors including Christopher Reeves ofc were filming for 19 months..

you can't see California without Marlon Brando's eyes

The best video I've seen on Brando because it's short and covers everything important.

He was supposed to play the role of the Priest that eventually went to James Woods in Scary Movie 2 but when he could barely get through his dialogue without his oxygen machine being heard

I know he had a terrible personality and an annoying sense of entitlement, but he one of my favorite actors of all time because he makes acting seems so easy, like he becomes the characters, there's no movies were like I say you find he doing a mimic or trait mark, he acts different in every movie just living the character. At least in his prime. I love Burn, One Eyed Jacks, The Fugitive Kind, and I don't like A Countess From Hong Kong but I think is cool to see him in a screwball comedy, he wasn't bad, just the movie was bad.

I wish I could not give a fuck while simultaneously be as successful as Brando. That dude must have have some powerful agents.

I don't think I can see California without Marlon Brando's eyes

Still say Kinski was more of a nightmare to work with

there's a robbery at woolworth's fucking sent me thanks brando

Thank you for uploading this thoughtful video. BTW in many of the stills and footage, in this upload, Brando has an uncanny resemblance to both Don Johnson and Christopher Lambert. It is something I have noticed before. But until now I haven't commented upon. I find Marlon Brando's approach to learning his lines rather enlightening. The legendary actor was quite correct. Scripted lines are often unnatural and rather insipid. David Chase, creator of 'The Sopranos' is notorious for insisting on actors strictly adhering to the written script. But I suspect the canny Chase allowed his more experienced actors to improvise on occasion.

Marlon Brando is a legend, for better or worse. His late career and life is so sad, though.

Francis Ford Coppola: Brando is one of 3 Geniuses I’ve ever met *RU-vidr* : He’s Lazy

While overpaid for Superman (1978), he did get paid for two movies. He was supposed to appear in the theatrical cut Superman II (1980), but to save money and avoid reshoots which were made to get the replacement director credit, all of his scenes were cut. His scenes in Superman II, which are pretty good, can be seen in the director's cut of the film.

His performance didn't seem lazy in "Streetcar Named Desire", or "Guys and Dolls" or "On the Waterfront". When I first saw Brando as Fletcher Christian in "Mutiny on the Bounty", I thought he was terrible because he seemed like such a supercilious twit. Very unsympathetic compared to Clark Gable's portrayal of Chistian. Later when I read about the mutiny I realized that was probably an accurate portrayal. Christian was of higher social status than Captain Blye who had worked his way up through the ranks, which was probably a reason for discord on the ship. Underacting as Vito Corleone also worked well as he was portraying a man who tried to reveal as little as possible from his words and expressions. It seems like that he got in the habit of underacting since it had worked so well for him. Though I have no idea what made him care so little about his body?

That 10 minutes in Superman was cut down from 30 minutes in the TV cut. He did a lot more than ended up on screen

Complicated guy, amazing artist and a genuine activist. I think he hated the business and the consumerism of the culture but also enjoyed the excesses it provided him. It's hard to believe he could have been better when he's already one of the greatest ever, he just liked making everyone's life hell for whatever reason lol

He fluctuated from film to film. He's absolutely fantastic in some films and very dull in others. He knew his abilities and would only make an effort when he was interested. Saying he was bad at the end of his career just shows how lazy YOU are. He turns in a few very nice performances in the last few films he made.

In the history of famous actors, Brando had a psychological effect over men in America, if you think of post Brando-generation that includes actors like Al Pacino, Robert De Niro or even, Jack Nicholson, all of them became actors because of Marlon Brando and also, he rewrote the game just like Bob Dylan did it in the pop culture. In fact, I remember reading about Brando for first time in an article at the age of 10, which was like love at first slight. Furthermore, I think he raised lots of actors including Johnny Depp, whom he worked in the movie Don Juan DeMarco.

One Eyed Jacks was a masterpiece.

Honestly i think some of the worst people in a profession can be the "gifted" people. They come into their line of work with little effort than when they get slightly challenged they fold and get rather lazy.

You can't see California without Marlon Brandos eyes.

Brando does put a lot of effort in his performances, but only the ones he cares about. And the more he aged, the thinner that list became

I listened to an interview of Marlon later in his life. He just didn't give a diddly damn about anything. I think he was burned out on everything.

That smiling troll face of Brando is hilarious. Should be a meme.

Deliberately screwing up his lines in order to make Sinatra eat more cheesecake is quite funny

He was a bit of a troll. I like that about him. Still, I believe in being professional at work and sh*t.

I mean, you can’t see California without Marlon Brando’s eyes

Referring to frank oz as miss piggy is hilarious

The butter scene is Last Tango in Paris was done without the consent of the actress. Both director B. Bertolluci and M. Brandon talk about doing it and they did.

not every role he played in the 60´s was lazy or badly acted. He did appear in the 1966 classic The Chase, and even if Brando hated it his performance is pretty amazing and realistic tho.

He played a stellar role in A Streetcar named Desire. Stellaaar!!!

His autobio, I believe it's called Songs My Mother Taught Me, is really entertaining. The Fugitive Kind is a very interesting and, I think, solid movie