But the notion that turbulence and incoherence had within them poetry and passion was not merely the engine to the Method - and all the naturalistic acting that came from it - it was the script that James Dean, Elvis Presley and just about every teenage icon ever since would act out. It is also a horribly American type: so strong, so anxious to be thought powerful, yet so desperate for tenderness.

The other great role that those words could describe is Mr. Brando's American in Bernardo Bertolucci's "Last Tango in Paris," made at a moment when the movies were so intoxicated by their own advances in the portrayal of sexual behavior that they needed a big star to really, truly "do it" on screen. Only an outsider would have taken that part. Only our generosity lets us overlook the fact that Mr. Brando was never as naked or vulnerable in the film as the woman, Maria Schneider.

AP looks at Brando's influence:

Regardless of his personal peculiarities, nothing could diminish Brando's reputation as an actor of startling power and invention.

He was the bridge between the heroic and upstanding screen purity of earlier stars such as Cary Grant, Gary Cooper and Henry Fonda and a generation of conflicted anti-heroes played by the likes of Robert De Niro, Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman.

"He influenced more young actors of my generation than any actor," longtime friend and "Godfather" co-star James Caan said Friday. "Anyone who denies this never understood what it was all about."

....His impact on screen acting was demonstrated by Academy Award nominations as best actor in four successive years: as Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951); as the Mexican revolutionary in "Viva Zapata!" (1952); as Marc Anthony in "Julius Caesar" (1953); and as Terry Malloy in "On the Waterfront" (1954). Besides his win for "The Godfather," he also had Oscar nominations for "Sayonara" (1957), "Last Tango in Paris" (1973) and "A Dry White Season" (1989).

The late Laurence Olivier, considered among the greatest actors of all time, thought Brando was the best American actor. He once said that Brando's secret to greatness was that he acted "with an empathy and an instinctual understanding that not even the greatest technical performers could possibly match."

Film critic Pauline Kael called Brando "our greatest living actor," and the curators at the American Museum of the Moving Image described him this way: "With animal intensity and insolent charm, he embodied a new and distinctly American on-screen style. Most significantly, he expressed the inner poetry of inarticulate working-class characters."

Brando's acolytes number among the greatest actors of the last half-century.

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