LOS ANGELES, July 2: Hollywood was in mourning as tributes poured in for screen legend Marlon Brando, who died here on Thursday. In keeping with Brando's famed desire for privacy, many of the messages were brief.
"Marlon would hate the idea of people chiming in to give their comments about his death," said Francis Ford Coppola, who directed him in 1979's "Apocalypse Now." "All I'll say is that it makes me sad he's gone."
Italian actress Sophia Loren, fondly remembering a man whom she considered a dear friend, said: "Actors such as him should be immortal." Loren starred alongside the Hollywood legend in Charlie Chaplin's 1967 film, "A Countess from Hong Kong".
"He was a wonderful work companion, a person of great education, a great professional," Loren was quoted as saying by the Ansa news agency. Calling him a "very dear friend", Loren noted that Brando's life had been marked by "real tragedies and he had possibly let himself go for that reason".
"With my generation," said Jack Nicholson, "it was always Marlon Brando, and always will be Brando." James Caan, who starred alongside Brando in the 1972 Oscar-winning film "The Godfather," paid tribute to Brando as an actor who influenced an entire generation.
"He influenced more young actors of my generation than any other actor. Anyone who denies it never understood what he was about. I loved him," Caan said in a statement. Actress Eva Marie Saint praised her co-star of the 1954 film "On the Waterfront."
"I will never forget the wonderful experience working with Marlon, filming 'On the Waterfront,'" she said. "Those scenes with him were something I shall always treasure. He was one of the most generous and talented actors."
INNER CONFLICT: Marlon Brando lived a life riven by the inner conflicts and personal tragedies that he was so expert at portraying on screen. An infamous recluse, Brando spent his final years holed up in his palatial estate atop Los Angeles's Mulholland Drive.
Prior to that he lived far from the cameras on a Tahitian island that he owned. The star of at least 40 movies and the winner of two best actor Oscars, Marlon Brando was born on April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of a travelling salesman and homemaker.
He had an unhappy childhood with parents who were both alcoholics, and began acting when he joined his sister in New York city after being kicked out of military school.
He took classes from Stella Adler, one of the chief proponents of the new theory of "method" acting which taught actors to immerse themselves in their characters by accessing similar emotions within their own psyche.
His portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in "The Streetcar Named Desire" proved the success of the new technique, ushering in a new style to replace the stiff formulaic approach that had dominated screen acting until then.
"Simply put: In film acting, there is before Brando, and there is after Brando. And they are like different planets," New York Times critic Rick Lyman said describing his impact.
Brando followed the 1951 film with other roles of note. In the space of a few years he portrayed a fatally noble Mexican bandit in "Viva Zapata!", a leather-clad teenage rebel in "The Wild One" and a frustrated boxer turned mafia errand boy in "On the Waterfront", which many consider his finest performance and which won him his first Oscar.
But from the earliest days of his fame, Brando had an ambivalent attitude to the acting world and its celebrity trappings. He stayed out of the public eye for much of the next two decades, deigning to appear in a handful of largely unmemorable roles even as he denigrated his chosen artform.
"If a studio offered to pay me as much to sweep the floor as it did to act, I'd sweep the floor," he said. "Who cares about the applause? Do I need applause to feel good about myself?"
Brando tried to find fulfilment with political activism in the 1960s. He gave a speech at the funeral of a Black Panther Party member and demonstrated against capital punishment and the treatment of Soviet Jews. He donated a portion of his income to the Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He tried to make a documentary on starvation in India. He also was a legendary womaniser. Brando wed British actress Anna Kashfi in 1957 and divorced her two years later.
A 1960 marriage to Movita Castenada, whom he met on the set of "Viva Zapata", lasted barely a year. In 1962, he met his third wife, Tarita Teriipaia, a 19-year-old former dishwasher and floor show dancer who played his lover in "Mutiny on the Bounty."
Major films: Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, Last Tango in Paris, Queimada! (Burn!), A Countess from Hong Kong, The Ugly American, Mutiny on the Bounty, Sayonara, The Teahouse of the August Moon, On the Waterfront, The Wild One, Desiree, Julius Caesar, Viva Zapata! A Streetcar Named Desire. -AFP
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