Marlon Brando Jr. (April 3, 1924 – July 1, 2004) was an American actor. Widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential actors in the history of cinema, Brando received numerous accolades throughout his career, which spanned six decades, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Cannes Film Festival Award, three British Academy Film Awards, and an Emmy Award. Brando is credited with being one of the first actors to bring the Stanislavski system of acting and method acting to mainstream audiences.

Brando came under the influence of Stella Adler and Stanislavski's system in the 1940s. He began his career on stage, where he was lauded for adeptly interpreting his characters. He made his Broadway debut in the play I Remember Mama (1944) and won Theater World Awards for his roles in the plays Candida and Truckline Cafe, both in 1946. He returned to Broadway as Stanley Kowalski in the Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), a role he reprised in the 1951 film adaptation, directed by Elia Kazan.

He made his film debut playing a wounded G.I. in The Men (1950) and won two Academy Awards for Best Actor for his roles as a dockworker in the crime drama film On the Waterfront (1954) and Vito Corleone in the gangster epic The Godfather (1972). He was Oscar-nominated for playing Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Emiliano Zapata in Viva Zapata! (1952), Mark Antony in Julius Caesar (1953), an air force pilot in Sayonara (1957), an American expatriate in Last Tango in Paris (1973), and a lawyer in A Dry White Season (1989).

Brando was known for playing characters who later became popular icons, such as the rebellious motorcycle-gang leader Johnny Strabler in The Wild One (1953), and he came to be seen as an emblem of the era's so-called "generation gap", with his portrayal of rebelliousness. He also starred in such films as Guys and Dolls (1955), The Young Lions (1958), The Fugitive Kind (1960), The Chase (1966), Burn! (1969), The Missouri Breaks (1976), Superman (1978), Apocalypse Now (1979), and The Freshman (1990). He made his directorial film debut with, and also starred in, the western drama One-Eyed Jacks (1961), which did poorly at the box office.

On television, Brando won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for his role in the ABC miniseries Roots: The Next Generations (1979), after which he took a nine-year hiatus from acting. He later returned to film, with varying degrees of commercial and critical success. The last two decades of his life were marked by controversy, and his troubled private life received significant public attention. He struggled with mood disorders and legal issues. His last films include The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) and The Score (2001).