Bizarre reason why Marlon Brando refused to learn his lines and instead had crew hold up cue cards
Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV, Hollywood, Oscars
Gerrard Kaonga
Featured Image Credit: Paramount Pictures
Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV, Hollywood, Oscars
Marlon Brando made a name for himself in Hollywood as one of the finest actors of his era, but his explanation for not learning his lines would raise some eyebrows today.
Getting an acting role in Hollywood isn’t enough to cement your name in the industry.
Loads of talents and not-so-talented people have come and gone through Hollywood without much fanfare.
But this certainly can’t be said of Marlon Brando. The man is a legend, and won two Best Actor Oscars before his death in 2004.
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His second Oscar was for his most iconic role in The Godfather as Vito Corleone, which won over generations. But you might not be aware that for some scenes in the film, Brando didn’t even bother to learn his lines.
Instead, he would have someone out of shot holding up cue cards, also unflatteringly known as 'idiot cards', and he would read off from them for the scene.
It does seem pretty odd for a veteran actor to not know every last word of his character, so what was the issue?
Was he just a bit lazy, last minute dialogue changes, uninterested in the role, or was there something more going on?
Well, according to Brando, there was method to his madness.
Brando was a follower of the Stanislavski Method of acting, which favors relaxed, naturalistic performances over practiced recital.
This can be seen in his performances of A Street Car Named Desire and On the Waterfront, and started a new trend in the industry that saw other leading stars chase that kind of performance.
So, to get this natural performance, Brando wanted to try something a little bit unorthodox. He would insist that when people speak, they don’t know exactly what they are going to say, so, to the actor, even the most nuanced reciting of scripted words felt off.
Biographer Stefan Kanfer highlighted Brando's thoughts on this in his book Somebody: The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon Brando.
He wrote: "In ordinary life, people seldom know exactly what they're going to say when they open their mouths and start to express a thought. They're still thinking, and the fact that they are looking for words shows on their faces. They pause for an instant to find the right word, search their minds to compose a sentence, then express it."
I guess it does make sense in a way, though it was likely a slight annoyance to those working on the film. But he did win an award for the performance, so maybe he was onto something.