(Credits: Far Out / United Artists)
Fri 11 April 2025 20:45, UK
Maybe one day, another actor will become the benchmark by which all spiritual successors are measured and judged. Then again, considering that it’s been over 70 years since Marlon Brando changed the face of American cinema forever, and he’s still the first name on everybody’s lips when a potential heir emerges, maybe not.
If anything, it’s getting a little lazy at this point. While there’s no denying that Brando is one of the most influential actors of all time, arguably the single most influential to ever grace the silver screen, it doesn’t mean every naturally gifted performer with a rugged machismo and soulful eyes should be slapped with the tag as soon as they give a performance even remotely evocative of the legendary method man.
Things haven’t been going great for Mickey Rourke in a long time, and there’s a solid case to be made that he was the closest thing the industry has ever had to a genuine second coming until he decided he’d be better off repeatedly hitting the self-destruct button on his career. Kurt Russell thinks Meryl Streep is worthy of the label, and at least that’s interesting.
The four most famous ‘new Brandos’ to emerge in the generation following his breakthrough were Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, and Paul Newman. The latter absolutely hated the comparisons and made a point of railing against them, while the former pair did at least have a similar Italian-American heritage.
All of them went on to become greats in their own right, and having worshipped at the altar of Brando for so long and worked with him on The Godfather, Pacino was well-placed to offer his thoughts on who matched up. That said, Jessica Chastain probably isn’t the first name that comes to mind.
“I had heard about her from Marthe Keller. She told me, ‘There’s this girl at Juilliard’. And she just walked in and started reading,” Pacino told The Smithsonian of her audition for 2011’s Wilde Salomé, the docudrama he directed. “And I turned to Robert Fox, this great English producer, and I said, ‘Robert, are you seeing what I’m seeing? She’s a prodigy!’ I was looking at Marlon Brando! This girl, I never saw anything like it.”
Of course, Chastain has gone on to establish herself as one of the finest actors in the business, winning an Academy Award and a Golden Globe and impressing in a range of different genres across films like Take Shelter, The Tree of Life, Zero Dark Thirty, Interstellar, Molly’s Game, A Most Violent Year, and more.
A relatively late bloomer, cinematically speaking, Chastain didn’t even make her feature debut until the age of 31 when she played the lead in Dan Ireland’s 2008 drama Jolene. She’s made up for lost time and then some, though, even if the Brando comparisons might enrage certain purists. Then again, none of them are Al Pacino, so who cares what they think?
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