The co-star who let their “unhealthy fascination” with Marlon Brando get the better of them: “He’s a god”
Over the course of his lengthy career, Ron Perlman has worked with some of the finest actors on planet Earth, with a long-standing relationship with Guillermo del Toro, which led to him sharing credits with John Hurt, Idris Elba, Cate Blanchett, and more.
Throw a dart at any of the major franchises he’s been involved with, and you’ll find a treasure trove of famous faces; his Christmas card list must be insane. Then there’ the big one, one of the most legendary and divisive actors of all time, and that’s Marlon Brando.
Their sole crossover came as part of the 1996 remake of The Island of Dr Moreau, where Perlman plays a man who has been transformed into a half-goat hybrid by the titular mad scientist and becomes something of a religious figure among his fellow experimentees. He rubbed elbows with all sorts of talents, from Val Kilmer to David Thewlis, but the star of the show was the man in the title role.
Speaking to Slant, Perlman recalled what it was like to work with Brando, whom he confessed to having “an unhealthy fascination” with. He described the experience in terms of the TV show The Honeymooners, and much like Jackie Gleason’s character, every time he saw Brando, he found himself going, “Hummana-hummana-hummana-hummana!”
“To me, he’s a God,” he said of his co-star, “What do you do when you get near a God? You just watch them. I spent so much time observing Marlon on that movie that I kept missing my own lines. I would hear him say, ‘It’s your line’, and I said, ‘I wonder who he’s talking to’. Then he’d say, ‘Hey, you, the blind guy, it’s your line’, I went, ‘Oh shit, it’s me!’”
Unfortunately, this was far from the best time for Perlman to meet his hero as Brando was not in a good way. He was initially very receptive to the project, but in his own inimitable style, he quickly changed his mind.
The famously volatile icon suffered a major tragedy when his daughter died unexpectedly before shooting began, such that it wasn’t clear if he was even going to be in the movie, but he soldiered on; sadly, given how it turned out, he probably should have stayed away.
The Island of Dr Moreau is often held up as an example of why Brando is overhyped, yet regardless of how many flops he put his name to, there are still people who follow him with religious devotion. Leonardo DiCaprio is famously a fan, receiving the Oscar that his idol won for On the Waterfront as a gift from a financier. Sean Penn, Johnny Depp, Paul Newman, Austin Butler, his name continuously crops up with all of them as one of the most influential performers of all time, even if he did look a right wally with that white bedsheet wrapped round his head.
Perlman’s one and only collaboration with the great man must have been bittersweet as The Island of Dr Moreau was one of the final films Brando made before his death in 2004. He left behind one of the most complicated legacies in Hollywood history, but Perlman doesn’t care about that one bit.
