Who is he?
April 3, 1924 – July 1, 2004) was a two-time Academy Award-winning actor whose body of work spanned over half a century.
He is best known for his roles in A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront, both directed by Elia Kazan in the early 1950s, and his Academy-Award winning performance as Vito Corleone in The Godfather and as Colonel Walter E. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, the latter two directed by Francis Ford Coppola in the 1970s.
His acting style, combined with his public persona as an outsider uninterested in the Hollywood of the early 1950s, had a profound effect on several generations of actors including Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Burt Reynolds, Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, James Caan, Sylvester Stallone, James Dean, Dustin Hoffman, Russell Crowe, Sean Penn, Christian Bale, Adrien Brody,Tom Hanks, Edward Norton, Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp.
He was also an activist, lending his presence to many issues, including the American Indian Movement. He was named the fourth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute.