"The easiest way to gauge anybody's legacy and influence on their chosen profession is to look at how it existed before and after them. When it comes to acting, there's not a shred of doubt in a single mind that Marlon Brando is unquestionably one of the most influential thespians to have ever graced the silver screen, and he might just be the most important in history. There's acting before Brando, and there's acting after Brando. It's that simple, with a clear distinction being drawn between the way performers conducted themselves on-screen before he first rose to prominence in the 1950s and the adoption of his signature techniques, naturalistic tendencies, and effortless gravitas as the norm that's been prevalent ever since. Of course, there's only ever going to be one Brando, and the list of legends, icons, and heavyweight talents he's directly inspired adds another layer to his legendary status. Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, and Jack Nicholson can all comfortably be listed among the all-time greats in their own right. Still, it goes without saying they were clearly more indebted to Brando's revolutionary approach than the classic silver screen stars of the Golden Age like Cary Grant, James Stewart, and Clark Gable. A staunch proponent of the method style, Hollywood acting in the pre-Brando era was broader, showier, and theatrical. Once A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront were released to shoot him into the stratosphere and win him an Academy Award for 'Best Actor' in the latter's case, everybody with their eyes on an acting career wanted to be like him. It was out with the old and in with the new and never again has acting seen such a sweeping shift in sentiment as it did in the wake of Brando's transformative, trailblazing, and game-changing work. The downside is that it made method the go-to way of working for every single aspiring star who wanted to emulate Brando, of which there were many. Fast forward seven decades and the debate over its merits continues to rage, with opponents remaining adamant that it's a gimmick used by certain names for no other reason than to feed their ego, allow them to wax lyrical about 'the craft', and generate easy buzz for a marketing campaign. Of course, that isn't entirely true of them all, especially when so many of the best actors of the modern age are famed for their method approach. Still, Brando instigated such a landscape-altering shift in the art form that its lasting effects haven't been entirely positive. ..."
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