Driven to madness by the method: the actors who hated working with Marlon Brando
It’s indicative of the standing he’s attained that many of the greatest actors in cinema history worship the ground that Marlon Brando walked on, such was the monumental legacy he left behind on the profession.
When such heavyweight thespians as Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Martin Sheen speak about him in almost deified tones, it underlines the impact he left behind. Unfortunately, Brando wasn’t always the easiest person to deal with, something many of his colleagues discovered first-hand.
The older he got, the more unruly Brando tended to become, but it was typically directors who tended to feel his wrath more than co-stars. His habit of refusing to lean lines and read from cue cards became an accepted part of his approach, but John Frankenheimer and Frank Oz are just two names who found out just how difficult he could be when he ditched any semblance of professionalism.
However, several of his scene partners experienced their misgivings with the method man, and in typical Brando fashion it was down to a number of different reasons. He shared the screen with Sophia Loren in Charlie Chaplin’s A Countess from Hong Kong, and she recounted how “it was very difficult working with him” after he made an unwanted advance in her direction on set.
The feud between Brando and Frank Sinatra became the stuff of Hollywood legend, and even though it began when the former landed the role of Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls that the latter had been fiercely coveting, ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ detested both the method technique and the actor who practiced it in equal measure, leading to a very frosty atmosphere between the two superstars.
Christopher Reeve said in no uncertain terms that “I don’t worship at the altar of Marlon Brando” following his experience on Superman, accusing his illustrious on-screen father of having “copped out in a certain way” due to the way he’d shown up, done the bare minimum, and walked away as the highest-paid person in the movie.
Not that people growing frustrated with Brando came only after he’d exploded onto the scene, with On the Waterfront cohort Karl Malden left frustrated during rehearsals. “Who the hell can get anything done around here?” he reportedly said of Brando’s style. “There’s no rhythm to the scene. One day you’re too early, the next you don’t come in at all!”
Mutiny on the Bounty was yet another Brando-fronted production beset by issues that were almost entirely of his own making, which left Trevor Howard bristling. The actor told Saturday Evening Post, “The man is unprofessional and completely ridiculous,” and he wasn’t even the only person in the cast who felt the same way.
Richard Harris called him “just a large dreadful nightmare for me,” which is at least in keeping with the troubled shoot. Because he was Brando, he was afforded a certain amount of leeway, but he didn’t half piss a lot of people off along the way.
