Marlon Brando, a two-time Oscar® winning actor, whose dynamic, animalistic presence on the silver screen made for one of pop culture's most incandescent icons, died in Los Angeles on July 1 of lung failure. He was 80.

He was born Marlon Brando Jr. on April 3, 1924 in Omaha, Nebraska to Marlon Sr., a taciturn disciplinarian, and his mother Dorothy, a drama coach. It was his mother who first exposed him to theater when she became a repertoire actress in the Omaha Community Playhouse. His family relocated to Libertyville, Illinois when Marlon was still in grade school. A mischievous, outgoing student, Bud (his childhood nickname) found himself consistently reprimanded for misconduct at school. When he entered high school, his grades and behavior (he was quite the prankster) didn't improve much, and when he turned 16 his father sent him to military school to instill some discipline into the aimless teenager.

Once there, Brando excelled in drama, but showed little interest in other academic studies. He was expelled, and because he was unable to enlist in the Army because of a trick knee, he was given 4-F status. Still, motivated by what he learned in theater class at the military school, and encouraged by his mother, an amateur actress, Brando decided to move to New York at the age of 19 to become an actor. His two older sisters were already living there: Frances, an art student, and Jocelyn, a budding actress. Jocelyn studied acting with Stella Adler, a major proponent of method acting - where emphasis was placed on exploring a role by tapping into personal experience rather than just reciting lines. Marlon accompanied Jocelyn one day to her acting class, and Adler quickly spotted the undeniable charisma in the brooding young man. From then on, Marlon was a much-touted pupil by Adler.

Within a year of his New York arrival, Brando made his Broadway debut, playing Nels for a two-year run in I Remember Mama (1944); and scored some positive notices for Truckline Cafe (1946), where the critics voted him Broadway's Most Promising Actor. The rules, and Brando's life, changed for good when Elia Kazan cast him opposite Jessica Tandy in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). As the brutish Stanley Kowalski, Brando thrilled audiences and critics with his raw, dynamic performance. Indeed, few actors before him dared to be so emotionally naked on stage and he promptly became the toast of Broadway.

Sure enough, Hollywood came calling, but Brando, ever the anti-star, displayed little interest for film stardom. It wasn't until he found a valuable project did he make his foray into movies. His film debut was an independent production for Stanley Kramer, The Men (1950). As a paraplegic war victim, Brando proved to be true to the "Method" technique as he spent a month in a veteran's hospital in preparation for the role. His second film would catapult him to international fame, the screen adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). As on Broadway, Brando's intensity and naturalism was nothing short of phenomenal. Here was an actor not just content to read his lines, but one who wanted to explore every nuance and contradiction of a character. Who would forget his cry of "Stell-ah!" which he screamed up a winding staircase to Kim Hunter? Until Brando, it simply hadn't happened before, and for his star turn in Streetcar, he earned his first Oscar® nomination for Best Actor.

Brando proved that Streetcar was no fluke with a string of fine films: Kazan would use him again in the title role of Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata! (a second Oscar® nomination, 1952); gave a modern interpretation of Mark Antony in Julius Caesar (third Oscar® nomination, 1953); portrayed Johnny, a swaggering, leather-clad leader of a motorcycle gang that terrorizes the inhabitants of a small town in The Wild One (1954); and of course, his moving portrayal of Terry Malloy, a dockworker who refuses to play by mob rules in his third film with Kazan, On the Waterfront (1954). Once again, Brando's eloquent delivery of street dialogue "I coulda been somebody, I coulda been a contender," was right on the money, and on his fourth Oscar® nomination, he finally bagged the win for Best Actor.

After Waterfront, Brando chose to play Napoleon Bonaparte for his next picture, Desiree (1954), which would be his first artistic disappointment. He rebounded when he displayed versatility by playing Sky Masterson in his first musical, the film adaptation of the smash Broadway musical Guys and Dolls (1955); and although it is now considered politically incorrect, his role as Sakini, the wily Okinawan houseboy (complete with false eyelids) in The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956), showed that if nothing else, Brando was an actor who was willing to take chances.

He was a fine romantic lead in the interracial love story, Sayonara (a fifth Oscar® nomination, 1957); and he was solid as a military commander in the war picture The Young Lions (1958). However his next films would prove to be missteps: the uneven Tennessee Williams drama with Joanna Woodward, The Fugitive Kind (1960), was a box office bomb. His own attempt at independent production, in which he took over the directorial reins after both Stanley Kubrick and Sam Peckinpah walked off the project, was the offbeat Western One-Eyed Jacks (1961), which also showed dismal results at the box-office; but his dreadful performance in the overblown remake of Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), where his temperament and infatuation with the South Pacific put the movie well over budget (MGM spent $19 million, a huge sum in those days) and Marlon Brando had revealed his Achilles heel at last.

Throughout the '60s, Brando was not without his bright moments, his light comedic talents shined as a conniving playboy rivaling David Niven for the affections of rich socialite (Shirley Jones) in Bedtime Story (1964); and his performance as a closeted gay military officer in John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), was considered daring for the time. Sadly, there were more misses than hits for the material Brando later chose: his work for Charles Chaplin in A Countess From Hong Kong (1967), made for a flat-footed comedy - but his work in the excruciating sex farce Candy (1968); and the turgid political thriller Burn (1969) were simply unworthy of his talents. The rarely seen kidnapping thriller The Night of the Following Day (1968), however, remains a fascinating, hard-edged film noir that is slowly building a cult following (it just came out on DVD).

By the early '70s, Brando's power as a box-office draw had cooled considerably. So it was all the more surprising when, against the objections of Paramount, director Francis Ford Coppola cast him to play Don Corleone, the aging head of a Mafia crime family in The Godfather (1972). The film was an outstanding critical and commercial success, and Brando's take on the rough throated mafia don was a classic performance that most deservedly earned him a second Oscar® for Best Actor, although his success was mired in controversy when, during the Oscar® telecast, he sent Sacheen Littlefeather (Latina actress Maria Cruz wearing Native American wardrobe) to decline the Oscarreg;, saying that he wanted to protest the treatment of Native Americans.

His next film, as an American widower who falls in love with a young French woman, was Bernardo Bertolucci's trenchant study of sex, Last Tango in Paris (a seventh Oscar® nomination 1973), which despite critical success, found little distribution in the U.S. due to its' X-rating. Yet after these two gems, it was back to mediocrity for his next film, the pretentious Western The Missouri Breaks (1976), co-starring Jack Nicholson; and his motivation for good parts was questioned when he accepted $3.7 million for what was essentially a cameo in Superman (1978). Fortunately his brief, but memorable appearance as the tortured Colonel Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola's epic anti-war masterpiece Apocalypse Now (1979) restored the faith for many of his fans.

By the '80s, Brando had become a recluse, living in self-imposed exile on an island he bought in Tahiti or in his hilltop home on Mulholland Drive. He made one film by the decades' end, as an outspoken barrister in the fine anti-Apartheid drama A Dry White Season (earning an eighth Oscar® nomination, 1989); and followed that up with a marvelous comic turn as Carmine Sabatini, an affable parody of his own Godfather character in The Freshman (1990). Yet Brando could not enjoy his comeback, as a personal tragedy struck the following year: Brando's son, Christian, shot and killed Dag Drollet, 26, the lover of Christian's half sister Cheyenne, at his father's family's home in Beverly Hills. Christian, 31, claimed the shooting was accidental, but after a highly publicized trial, Christian was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Tragically, Cheyenne committed suicide just five years later. She was only 25.

Despite his daughter's death, Brando soldiered on and worked in some interesting films: a psychiatrist who wants to understand the bonds of love in Don Juan DeMarco (1995); a prison warden in the quirky comedy Free Money (1998), with Mira Sorvino; and his final film, an aging thief in the crime caper The Score (2001).

Brando's heirs are difficult to document, but it is believed he is survived by his 10 remaining children: Christian, Miko, Rebecca, Teihotuv, Ninnav, Priscilla, Myles, Timothy, Stefano, and Petra.

by Michael T. Toole