R.I.P. Marlon Brando

R.I.P., Marlon Brando --

PLAYBOY: And you didn't feel that acting was worth while or fulfilling enough?

BRANDO: There's a big bugaboo about acting; it doesn't make sense to me. Everybody is an actor; you spend your whole day acting. Everybody has suffered through moments where you're thinking one thing and feeling one thing and not showing it. That's acting. Shaw said that thinking was the greatest of all human endeavors, but I would say that feeling was. Allowing yourself to feel things, to feel love or wrath, hatred, rage. . . . It's very difficult for people to have an extended confrontation with themselves. You're hiding what you're thinking, what you're feeling, you don't want to upset somebody or you do want to upset somebody; you don't want to show that you hate them; your pride would be injured if they knew you'd been affected by what they said about you. Or you hide a picayune aspect of yourself, the prideful or envious or vulnerable, and you pretend that everything's all right. 'Hi, how are you?' People look at your face and it's presentable: 'And I shall prepare a face to meet the faces that I meet.'

So we all act. The only difference between an actor professionally and an actor in life is the professional knows a little bit more about it--some of them, anyway--and he gets paid for it. But actually, people in real life get paid for acting, too. You have a secretary who has a lot of sex appeal and a great deal of charm and she knows it, she's going to get paid for that, whether she delivers sexual favors or not. A very personable, attractive young man, who reflects what the boss says, is smart enough to know what the boss feels and likes and wants and he knows how to curry favor . . . he's acting. He goes in in the morning and he gives him a lot of chatter, tells the right kind of jokes and it makes the boss feel good. One day the boss says, "Listen, Jim, why don't you go to Duluth and take over the department there? I think you'd do a bang-up job." And then Jim digs his toe under the rug and says, "Oh, gosh, I never thought, J. B. . . . Gee, I don't know what to say. . . . Sure, I'll go. When?" And he jumps into the plane and checks off what he's been trying to do for four years--get J. B. to give him the Duluth office. Well, that guy's acting for a living, singing for his supper, and he's getting paid for it.

From Brando's Playboy Interview, 1979.