Richard Harris on why he called Marlon Brando was “a large dreadful nightmare”
Being one of the best in the world at any chosen profession either comes naturally or through hard work, with Marlon Brando fulfilling the former by being so good at acting nobody cared in the slightest that he could rarely be bothered to learn any of his lines.
He arrived on the scene in the early 1950s and remade acting in his own image, instigating the dawn of mainstream method acting, and the industry hasn’t looked the same since. It would be unfair to say Brando never tried, but it’s also accurate to acknowledge how that became increasingly rare the longer his career wore on.
Of course, because he was so preternaturally talented and made even the most complex of performances look effortlessly natural, he was provided with an amount of leeway that would never be afforded to lesser stars. When Brando was firing on all cylinders, there may never have been anyone better, but he also had a habit of making life thoroughly miserable for everyone in his orbit.
The majority of actors, regardless of whether they’re jobbing thespians or A-list megastars, all serve the same function at the end of the day: they turn up, recite the lines in the screenplay, perform to the best of their abilities, and then go home. An oversimplification, yes, but not one Brando ever concerned himself with either way.
In his later years, the actor would gain more infamy and notoriety for his off-camera antics than he would for his efforts in front of it, but there was never a single moment where he decided he was going to be a prickly arsehole. That temperament had always been there, but he was only able to indulge it once he’d become a star.
Lewis Milestone’s historical drama Mutiny on the Bounty began shooting in November 1960, less than a decade removed from Brando’s breakthrough in A Streetcar Named Desire. He already had an Academy Award under his belt from five ‘Best Actor’ nominations at that point, though, so he was fully aware of his own worth.
The shoot quickly descended into chaos and ended up running months behind schedule and going millions over budget, with Brando always at the centre of the storm. Co-star Richard Harris admired him as an actor and wouldn’t think of denying he was among the best in Hollywood, but working with him was an experience he was in no rush whatsoever to replicate.
“The whole picture was just a large dreadful nightmare for me, and Brando was just a large dreadful nightmare for me,” he admitted to the Saturday Evening Post. “I’d prefer to forget both as soon as my nerves recover from the ordeal.”
Despite those tales coming straight from the mouths of the horses who’d made Mutiny on the Bounty, Brando nonetheless filed a $5million lawsuit against the publication after feeling he’d been disparaged. The major issue with the litigation was that when there were so many of his colleagues going on the record about his unprofessional conduct, he didn’t have much of a leg to stand on trying to say it was even remotely defamatory.
