Marlon Brando Dies Aged 80

Marlon Brando, arguably the greatest film actor of the 20th century, has died at the age of 80. The two-time Oscar winner passed away yesterday at a Los Angeles hospital, according to his lawyer. He had recently been suffering from pneumonia.

The leading proponent of the Method school of American acting, Brando brought an anguished, physical intensity to his roles that made him a symbol for the burgeoning 1950s youth culture. He won two best actor Oscars, for his roles in Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront and Francis Coppola's The Godfather.

Brando cut his teeth in the theatre, winning rave reviews for his turn as Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire - a role he would later play on screen. He made his film debut in 1950 as a paraplegic war veteran in The Men and courted controversy for his iconic role as a leather-clad biker in The Wild One.

To his peers Brando was by turns an inspiration and an enigma. Famously dismissive of his own talent, he was also a committed political activist and allied himself to the civil rights movement throughout the 1960s. He notably refused his 1972 Oscar for The Godfather in protest at the US government's policy towards Native Americans.

Off-screen, Brando's life was beset by tragedy. His son Christian was charged with the voluntary manslaughter of his sister's boyfriend in 1990. His daughter Cheyenne committed suicide in 1995. In recent months he was reported as being nearly destitute, having blown his fortune on legal battles.

On-screen, however, Brando was never less than electrifying - even on those all too frequent occasions when he seemed to be purposely sabotaging a movie. His long-time friend Jack Nicholson reportedly once remarked: "Brando is the best, the actor that we all look up to. When he goes, the rest of us move up one place."

"The only thing an actor owes to his public is not to bore them," Marlon Brando once said. Throughout his 80 years, Brando could be enraging, enthralling, mysterious and exasperating. But Marlon Brando was never boring.