The Marlon Brando performance Roger Ebert called his worst ever: “The absolute minimum of energy”
Even the best actors in history have proven themselves capable of giving a terrible performance or two, but there’s arguably no legend to have veered so wildly between both sides of the spectrum than Marlon Brando, who’ll always be remembered as one of the all-time greats despite stinking up a fair few films.
Nobody could hold a candle to Brando when he was firing on all cylinders. Not many performers have burst onto the scene and reshaped the entire profession, but he’s one of the small few. He left behind a legacy that’s defined screen acting for the last seven decades, even if he fell out of love with the craft.
The longer Brando’s career went on, the more likely he was to be competing for Razzies than Academy Awards. He won two Oscars from eight nominations between 1952 and 1990 to underline his longevity, but on the other side of the coin, his moments of greatness were increasingly punctuated by on-set troubles, lazy performances, and his ongoing habit of making life miserable for various directors.
As far as Roger Ebert was concerned, Brando had never been worse than he was in 1992’s Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, which captured his late-stage apathy to a tee. He was awarded top billing in the marketing despite George Corraface playing the title role, he was paid $5 million for his troubles, and he tried to have his name removed from the credits before the movie was released.
Ebert savaged the picture, but he reserved special scorn for The Godfather and On the Waterfront veteran. Describing the part of Tomás de Torquemada as “Marlon Brando’s worst performance in memory,” the critic blasted the star for the way he “sulks about the set looking moody and delivering his lines with the absolute minimum of energy necessary to be audible.”
It wasn’t uncommon for Brando to sleepwalk his way through a film, but The Discovery was where Ebert drew the line. “He’s phoned in roles before,” he acknowledged. “But this was the first time I wanted to hang up.” He wasn’t alone in his assessment of Brando’s half-arsed turn, with the Razzies placing him on the shortlist for ‘Worst Supporting Actor.’
Ironically, he ended up losing that award to one of his co-stars in The Discovery after it was decreed that Tom Selleck’s work as King Ferdinand was demonstrably worse, which speaks volumes to the historical epic’s overall shoddy quality.
Ebert was adamant that it was the single worst performance of Brando’s storied career, but the film itself was so terrible that the awards body that specialises in honouring the bottom of the Hollywood barrel didn’t even anoint it as the weakest turn in the movie.
