American actor Marlon Brando was BOTD in 1924. Born in Omaha, Nebraska, his parents divorced when he was a child, and he grew up in Chicago, California and Illinois before being sent to military school in Minnesota. He moved to New York in the 1940s, studying Method Acting at the New School with Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg. After some notable supporting performances on Broadway, he became an overnight star as Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams‘ play A Streetcar Named Desire, electrifying audiences with his beauty, charisma and sex appeal. He repeated the role in the 1951 film version; it was a landmark performance, establishing him as an acting legend and omnivorous sex symbol. Abandoning the stage for Hollywood, he appeared in Julius Caesar, and brought a homoerotic charge to his role as a leather-clad biker in The Wild One. His performance as a morally conflicted stevedore in 1954’s On the Waterfront showcased his compelling blend of brutality and sensitivity, winning him an Oscar. His subsequent career was erratic, though he had an impressive career comeback in the 1970s as the titular Mafia boss in The Godfather, winning him a second Oscar, and the controversial erotic thriller Last Tango in Paris. Married three times and with at least 11 children, he is thought to have had affairs with most of Hollywood, including (in alphabetical order) Leonard Bernstein, Montgomery Clift, Jackie Collins, Noël Coward, Wally Cox, James Dean, John Gielgud, Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, Jackie Kennedy, Burt Lancaster, Marilyn Monroe, Vivien Leigh (and, simultaneously, her husband Laurence Olivier), Rita Moreno, Tyrone Power, Richard Pryor and Shelley Winters. He also had an erotically-charged friendship with gay writer James Baldwin, participating together in Black civil rights demonstrations. In 1976, he told a journalist “Like a large number of men, I, too, have had homosexual experiences, and I am not ashamed.” His friend Quincy Jones was more direct, saying, “He’d fuck anything. Anything! He’d fuck a mailbox!” Largely retired by the 1990s and morbidly obese, he retreated to his private island near Tahiti, dying in 2004 aged 80. Now considered one of the 20th century’s greatest stars, his work has been endlessly imitated by generations of actors. He was played by Matt Dillon in the 2025 biopic Being Maria, focusing on the making of Last Tango.