Was fluent in French.
Was mentioned in La Dolce Vita (1960) in a discussion about salary paid to film stars.
Was named #4 Actor on The 50 Greatest Screen Legends list by The American Film Institute.
Was offered $2 million for four days work to appear as a priest in Scary Movie 2 (2001) but had to withdraw when he was hospitalized with pneumonia in April 2001. Consequently the role was played by James Woods.
Was offered the part of Viktor Komarovsky in Doctor Zhivago (1965) by double-Oscar winning director David Lean. However, a month went by and Brando failed to respond to Lean's written inquiry into whether he wanted to play Komarovsky, so the director offered the part to James Mason, who was a generation older than Brando. Lean decided on Mason, who initially accepted the part, as he did not want an actor who would overpower the character of Yuri Zhivago (specifically, to show Zhivago up as a lover of Lara, who would be played by the young Julie Christie, which the charismatic Brando might have done, shifting the sympathy of the audience). Mason eventually dropped out and Rod Steiger, who had just won the Silver Bear as Best Actor for his role as the eponymous The Pawnbroker (1964), accepted the role.
Was paid $3 million for 10 days work on The Formula (1980) (approximately $8.5 million in 2005 terms). Brando told Lawrence Grobel ("Conversations with Brando") that the movie, which he only made for the money as he was broke, was ruined in the editing room, with the humor of his scenes cut out. In his autobiography, Brando -- in a caption for a picture from the film -- recounts that George C. Scott asked him during the shooting of the film whether he, Brando, would ever give the same line-reading twice. Brando replied, "I know you know a cue when you hear one." The two both played chess together during waits during the shooting. Scott said that Brando was not that good a player.
Was roommates with Wally Cox during his theatrical training in New York City. The two remained lifelong friends, and Brando took Cox's sudden death from a heart attack at the age of 48 extremely hard.
Was scheduled to appear in the David Lean-directed "Nostromo" in 1991, but when Lean died, the production came to a halt. Thus, the world missed the last of three chances to see one of the world's greatest actors work with one of the world's greatest directors. Producer Sam Spiegel, who had won an Oscar for On the Waterfront (1954), offered Brando the title role in Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962), but he turned it down, saying he didn't want to ride camels in the desert for two years. Brando was Lean's first choice for the male lead in Ryan's Daughter (1970/I), but Brando, who at that time was considered box office poison by movie studios, never was offered the role.
Was the first male actor to break the $1-million threshold when MGM offered him that amount to star in Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), its remake of its own 1935 classic. Brando had turned down the lead role in David Lean's masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia (1962), which had been offered by producer Sam Spiegel, because he didn't like the lengthy shooting schedule. Ironically, "Bounty" itself wound up with an extensive shooting schedule due to a snail-pace schedule caused by a plethora of problems due to location shooting. With overages due to the extended shoot, Brando pocketed $1.25 million for the picture (approximately $8 million in 2005 dollars). Elizabeth Taylor had previously broken the million-dollar mark for a single picture with her renegotiated contract for Cleopatra (1963). Both films went vastly over schedule and wildly over budget and wound up hemorrhaging rivers of red ink despite relatively large grosses, though Taylor's flick outshone Brando's in the area of fiscal irresponsibility and wound up bankrupting its studio, 20th Century-Fox. Seventeen
Was unable to raise the $10-million bail initially required of his son Christian Brando (Christian Brando) in the May 16, 1990, slaying of his sister Cheyenne's boyfriend Dag Drollet. After a two-day preliminary hearing in early August 1990, the presiding judge ruled that enough evidence had been presented to try Christian on first-degree murder charges. At that time the judge refused to lower the $10-million bail due to what he termed evidence of the Brando family's failure to cooperate with he court, specifically citing Cheyenne's flight from the United States to avoid helping the police investigation. However, two weeks later the same judge reduced Christian's bail to $2 million, which Marlon was able to post by putting up his Mulholland Drive house as collateral. He soon accepted a cameo role in the film Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992) for $5 million, according to Variety, the bible of the Hollywood trade papers.
When cast as Col. Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), Brando had promised to lose weight for the role, as well as read Joseph Conrad's novel "Heart of Darkness", on which Coppola's script was based. Coppola had envisioned Kurtz as a lean and hungry warrior; the character of Kurtz in the Conrad novellas was a wraith and weighed barely more than a child despite his great stature, due to his suffering from malaria. When the 52-year-old Brando -- who had already been paid part of his huge salary -- appeared on the set in the Philippines, he had lost none of the weight, so Coppola and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro were forced to put Brando's character in the shadows in most shots. In the penultimate appearance of Kurtz in the film, when he appears in silhouette in the doorway of his temple compound as the sacrificial bull is lead out, a very tall double (about 6'5") was used to try to give the character a greater physical stature, rather than just Buddha-like belly-fat that girded the 5'10" Brando. He didn't get around to reading the novella until many years later.
When participating in the March on Washington, brandished a cattle prod to show the world the brutality blacks faced in the South.
While filming The Score (2001), he refused to be on the set at the same time as director Frank Oz, referring to the former "Muppets" director as "Miss Piggy.".
While making Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) in Tahiti, Brando fell in love with the place. So, in 1966, he purchased Tetiaroa, a small atoll located approximately 30 miles north of Tahiti. Tetiaroa is to be the site of a lavish new ecological hotel called The Brando. Consisting of 30 deluxe fares (villas), it will be the only hotel on Tetiaroa.
Won his seventh, and last, Best Actor Oscar nomination in 1974, for Last Tango in Paris (1972), after he had generated much ill-will in Hollywood by refusing his Oscar for The Godfather (1972). Academy President Walter Mirisch said of the nomination, "I think it speaks well for the Academy. It proves that voting members are interested only in performances, not in sidelights." Interestingly, the only other actor to refuse an Academy Award, George C. Scott, also was nominated as Best Actor the year following his snubbing of the Academy. So far, Brando, Scott and screenwriter Dudley Nichols, who refused to accept his 1935 Oscar for the movie The Informer (1935) due to a Writers Guild strike, are the only people out of more than 2,000 winners to turn down the Award.
Worked as a department store elevator operator before he became famous. He quit after four days due to his embarrassment in having to call out the lingerie floor.
Youngest of three children.