What was the final movie to star Marlon Brando?
No actor has ever made a bigger impact on American cinema than Marlon Brando, who revolutionised the face of acting to such a degree that he’s now spoken of in tones so reverential they border on the deified.
Before he burst onto the scene and changed the game, movie stars generally performed more theatrically, with realism hardly high on the agenda. However, things would never be the same again once Brando rose to prominence in the early 1950s.
Popularising the method technique, Brando’s naturalism and authenticity were a breath of fresh air in a ‘Golden Age’ for Hollywood that was more stagey, show-offy, and obviously fictional. Of course, all films are works of fiction at the end of the day, but Brando was the first to make his characters feel like real people who had interior lives before and after the story.
His influence is best displayed by the fact that so many of those who followed in his footsteps and became all-time greats actively worship the ground he walked on. Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Jack Nicholson are three of the greatest ever, but every single one of them would instantly point towards Brando as being completely untouchable.
Of course, his later years were blighted by unprofessionalism and eccentricities, but there’s a reason why genius and madness are so inextricably linked. Late-stage Brando remained more than capable of pulling a top-drawer performance out of the bag when he could be bothered, but those days were few and far between.
His work became increasingly sporadic as he got older, and it summed up the duality of his impact on cinema that the final film role of his career was indicative of the troublemaker he’d become.
What was Marlon Brando’s last movie?
It goes without saying that the best Marlon Brando movies didn’t come towards the end of his career. On the Waterfront and A Streetcar Named Desire defined his initial explosion before The Godfather reminded everyone of his inimitable gifts two decades later.
The final movie he appeared in was an exercise in wish-fulfilment for Robert De Niro, who got the chance to share the screen with his idol in 2001’s crime caper The Score. Unfortunately, it didn’t come under the best or most agreeable of circumstances.
Brando made a habit of belittling director Frank Oz, repeatedly referring to him as Miss Piggy due to his history with The Muppets. In addition to refusing to wear trousers in certain scenes, the veteran would regularly refuse to be directed by Oz at all, with De Niro stepping behind the camera to try and keep the peace and ensure his hero could at the very least do the job they were being paid to do.
So, what was Marlon Brando’s final role?
The Score may have been his final theatrical credit, but before Marlon Brando died on July 1st, 2004 at the age of 80, he picked up several additional roles covering live-action, animation, video games, and music.
His last day on a movie set came on the spoof sequel Scary Movie 2 when he was cast as Father McFeely in a scene parodying The Exorcist. It was a huge coup for the production, but due to his declining health, Brando dropped out after a single day of shooting to be replaced by James Woods.
He also stepped into the recording booth for the animated feature Big Bug Man, where he voiced an elderly woman who runs a corrupt candy company. Brando only worked one day on that production, too, with director Bob Bendetson revealing he still went method by wearing a blonde wig, a dress, and full makeup during his recording session. However, that all turned out to be for nothing because the film was never released.
Brando’s last live-action role came after The Score had released, with the star shooting a cameo appearance as ‘The Boss’ in the video for close friend Michael Jackson’s ‘You Rock My World’, which premiered on MTV on September 26th, 2001.
And yet, that wasn’t his final contribution to the entertainment world, either. Two years after his death, Brando briefly returned as the iconic Vito Corleone in The Godfather video game, which hit shelves on March 21st, 2006. He couldn’t breathe without the aid of an oxygen mask, rendering the majority of his readings unusable as a result, with only a single line of dialogue making the cut to bring a legendary career to a tragically bittersweet end.
