Marlon Brando’s hatred of Burt Reynolds: “The epitome of something that makes me wanna throw up”
When Marlon Brando played Stanley in Elia Kazan’s film adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire – a role he portrayed on Broadway, too – everyone knew he would become a star. It was only his second movie role, but Brando commanded the screen with the skills of a veteran actor.
He subsequently teamed up with Kazan again for Viva Zapata! before appearing in some particularly acclaimed movies like The Wild One and On the Waterfront, with the latter also being directed by Kazan. Brando starred in further popular movies over the coming years, even directing himself in One-Eyed Jacks.
In the 1970s, Brando collaborated with Francis Ford Coppola, whose adaptation of Mario Puzo’s novel, The Godfather, was facing a rocky pre-production process. Coppola was almost fired, and it seemed unlikely that the film was going to perform as well as it did. In the end, it was – as we know – a raving success. The Godfather is often lauded as one of the greatest movies ever made, and it’s hard to divorce images of a brooding Brando from your mind simply at the utterance of the film’s title.
He played Vito Corleone, the head of the mafia family. Brando initially didn’t want to star in the film – and the studio didn’t want him in it either. Yet, Puzo and Coppola knew he was perfect, and in the end, he was in. It’s hard to imagine anyone else playing the crime patriarch, and critics and audiences were certainly impressed by his astounding performance. When it came to casting Michael Corleone, Brando’s on-screen son, Coppola eventually settled on Al Pacino – not before almost casting Burt Reynolds.
The issue was that Brando despised Reynolds and didn’t want to work with him. Thus, Pacino was cast, and Reynolds continued on with other projects. A few years later, however, Coppola was interested in casting Reynolds in Apocalypse Now, which Brando also had a main role in. You can probably guess what happened next.
Brando went on a spoken tirade against his contemporary, calling him “the epitome of something that makes me want to throw up.” The actor didn’t hold back with his vicious comments, adding that he was “the epitome of everything that is disgusting about the thespian.”
He even went as far as to say, rather ironically, “he worships at the temple of his own narcissism.” When Reynolds’ name was merely mentioned, Brando was instantly disgusted. “Don’t say that name around me,” he stated. Then, when told that Reynolds is a nice guy, he replied, “He can’t be.”
He added, “Totally narcissistic person,” before giving some insight into why he hated him so much.
“I saw him on the TV one time. It was in the opening of some movie he did called The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing, and he had ordered some Indian kid there because it was a little anti-Indian, and he wanted to make compensations for it.”
He continued by describing how Reynolds was “playing for the cameras” to show how nice he was, but Brando saw straight through the act, calling it a “shitty” idea.
