“The greatest actor of all time,” according to Harry Dean Stanton
There was something extraordinary about the cinema icon Harry Dean Stanton. His unique looks, slight frame and unassuming character meant that whenever Stanton played in a movie, he always brought something that only he could deliver, with on-screen moments of true memorability.
Stanton carried the screen presence of a person who didn’t need to shout in order to be heard—let the silence do the heavy lifting. With a face carved from smoke and sand, he floated into Hollywood like a ghost playing the guitar, appearing in everything and being able to steal scenes without even trying.
Of course, Harry Dean wasn’t exactly a household name, yet to the connoisseurs, he was the heartbeat of the seedy side of American cinema. Cult hero, troubadour of the odd and the weary, and, as his friend David Lynch would have you know, “The greatest actor in the world,” the director once said. It wasn’t about the words he spoke—it was about the spaces between.
Stanton’s efforts in the likes of Cool Hand Cool, The Godfather Part II, Alien, Pretty in Pink and The Last Temptation of Christ suggest that he was made for the supporting role, which, to an extent, is true, but Stanton possessed an ability to make such secondary parts larger than they had been written.
He did, of course, also provide a handful of lead roles in movies such as Paris, Texas and Lucky, which are perhaps two of his best-ever moments, and Stanton was also afforded the opportunity to work with some of the best actors to ever grace the screen, including Marlon Brando on the 1976 western movie The Missouri Breaks.
During a feature with Uncut, Stanton was asked several questions from his fans, and one came in about his relationship with Brando. Of the best moments Stanton ever had with his fellow actor, he said: “He told me Shakespearean soliloquies over the phone. ‘Our revels now are ending…’ What was that one from? The Tempest?”
The acting icon continued: “He taught me a couple of them, and I would do them over the phone, and he would direct me over the phone.” Evidently, there was something of a special friendship between the two legends of cinema, and Brando could perhaps ease himself into a sense of comfort with the laidback Stanton.
Brando was “an amazing man” for Stanton, though, who added: “He had a great sense of humour, tremendous depth, unpredictable”. In fact, Stanton went as far as to say that “in my opinion”, Marlon Brando was the singular “greatest actor of all time”, echoing what several cinema fans had already perhaps thought.
“We were very close, yeah,” he added before noting that in the last three years of Brando’s life, the two would spend hours talking on the phone together, and Stanton would often visit his house. One particularly amusing time came when Brando asked Stanton what he thought of him. Stanton’s response was, “I think you’re nothing”.
Brando was, of course, one of the most famous actors of all time, so for Stanton to call him nothing was a moment of brilliance from his fellow performer. But it also arguably stemmed from the interest in “Eastern concepts” that the two shared. “He knew what I was talking about,” Stanton said before signing off by comparing him to Bob Dylan: “Both very eccentric, complex characters.”
