Marlon Brando successful film, he won his second Academy Award for playing Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather", a role critics consider among his greatest. "The Godfather" was then one of the most commercially successful films of all time. With that and his Oscar-nominated performance in "Last Tango in Paris", Brando re-established himself in the ranks of top box-office stars, placing sixth and tenth in the Money Making Stars poll in 1972 and 1973, respectively. Brando took a four-year hiatus before appearing in "The Missouri Breaks" (1976). After this, he was content with being a highly paid character actor in
Marlon Brando star among male movie stars whose screen debuts occurred in or before 1950. He was one of six professional actors, along with Charlie Chaplin, Ronald Reagan, Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra, and Marilyn Monroe, named in 1999 by "Time" magazine as one of its . Brando was born on April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, to Marlon Brando, Sr. (1895–1965), a pesticide and chemical feed manufacturer, and Dorothy Julia (née Pennebaker; 1897–1954). Brando had two older sisters, Jocelyn Brando (1919–2005) and Frances (1922–1994). His ancestry was German, Dutch, English, and Irish. His patrilineal immigrant ancestor, Johann Wilhelm Brandau, arrived in New