He was the genius that singlehandedly invented the method school of acting and whose contributions to American cinema, and influence on the art of cinematic acting are quite simply staggering. His early film appearances are characterised by his iconic moody, rebel persona, a mould breaking prototype, which served as the essential template for countless actors that would follow him, including Robert De Nero and Al Pacino.
People have criticised the latter work of his long career, but he still managed to appear in timeless classics: Last Tango in Paris, The Godfather series and the epic Apocalypse Now.
Vote genius for this twentieth century icon, who also happenned to be one of the greatest actors of all time.
If method acting is simply a matter of getting really, really fat and putting a couple of handfuls of cotton wool in your mouth, then Brando certainly did that. Among the other acting methods he liked to use were: demanding enormous fees for cameos, behaving really badly and being spectacularly difficult to work with and going a bit mad and and allowing his weight to balloon to over thirty stones. Directors would be driven to distraction trying to get the huge fat Brando onto set. When he finally did emerge from his luxury hospitality trailer three hours late, he would often deliberately have his knob hanging out.
There was his appearance in Superman The Movie, which he got paid something like ninety percent of the film's budget to slur his way through five or six lines of dialog lasting a total of two minutes. Not only was his fee exhorbitant, it cost the production company a fortune because of the number of times that had to shoot the scenes until Brando's huge fat ego was satisfied.
What about his early films? Big deal - he's the same mumbling, bad tempered cunt in all of them. Of course he looked good at the time, it was the fifties and the competition would have been pretty piss poor.
Now that you have heard the two balanced and rational arguments, it's time to make up your mind and cast your vote:
return to GoC