Marlon Brando Sat in Dick Cavett's Chair and Said Something About Acting That No One Took at Face

Marlon Brando appeared on The Dick Cavett Show and said something about acting — about what it really is, stripped of everything the industry had built around it — that sounded like modesty and was actually closer to a confession about why he had spent his whole life trying to escape the thing he was best at. In this video, we look at what Brando said on Cavett's show about the nature of performance, and the story behind those words: his years at the Actors Studio, his deliberate rejection of Hollywood's expectations, his refusal of the Academy Award, and what it meant that the greatest actor of his generation seemed, at every stage, profoundly ambivalent about acting. Dick Cavett, The Dick Cavett Show, Marlon Brando, Hollywood history, 1970s talk show, classic television, ABC, retro TV history, untold story, celebrity interview, vintage television, classic Hollywood, Method acting, The Godfather.