Marlon Brando emerged from the method-acting workshops of 1940s New York and assaulted the Broadway stage more like a force of nature than an actor -- and when that force hit Hollywood, movies changed forever. In such now-iconic roles as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (1979), Brando created a new and influential type of male lead -- brooding, tormented, full of raw emotional energy. Brando's often tumultuous, often controversial personal life has both shaped and mirrored the dark intensity of his cinematic art. In Marlon Brando, David Thomson focuses his acute critical skills and brilliant prose style on the man whom many consider the greatest actor of our time. Book jacket.