Playing larger than life, emotionally raw characters, Brando was the sexy, angry everymanof his generation.

He was the drunken, rapacious hunkin A Streetcar Named Desire; the definitive motorcycle rebel in The Wild One; and the hardworking longshoremanin On the Waterfront. Nominated for four Academy Awards, Brando won two gold men.

Later in his career, Brando was best known for his reclusive, eccentric behavior, on-set tantrumsand outsized indulgence in food and women. In the mid-1990s, Brando weighed more than 300 pounds and he had at least nine children with three ex-wives and various others.

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

Born in Nebraska and raised in Illinois with two older sisters, Brando had a less-than-idyllic childhood. His father was a farm-feed, limestoneand insecticide salesman and his mother was a retired stage actress. Both were raging alcoholics.

Expelledfrom a military academy as a teen, Brando dug ditches until his father agreed to pay for school. He then moved to New York and studied acting with Stella Adler and at Lee Strasberg's Actor's Studio, where he became a true "method" actor.

Brando debuted on Broadway in 1944, when he was just 20, in I Remember Mama. In 1947, he electrified Broadway - and became famous - as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Brando hit the big screen as a World War II veteran in The Men (1950). Then in quick succession he appeared in the defining roles of his career: the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951); Viva Zapata! (1952); Julius Caesar (1953), as a potent Marc Antony; The Wild One (1953), as an angry young motorcycle gang leader; On the Waterfront (1954); Guys and Dolls (1955), where he sang and danced; and The Young Lions (1958), as an emotionally complex young Nazi.

In his prime, Brando defined rebel chic; his role in The Wild One inspired the now-classic jeans and T-shirt look (with and without the leather jacket).

In the 1960s, though, Brando's career floundered. He established a reputation as difficult on the set of the expensive flop Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). Brando threw tantrums, tried to change the script, had affairs and got fat. A clause in his contract paid him ,000 for each day they went over the allottedfilming time; in the end, he made .25 million for the role.

By 1972 Brando's former brilliance was so tarnishedthat when he was considered for the role of Don Corleone in The Godfather, he had to test for it.

Further enhancing his eccentric mystique, when Brando won the Oscar for the role, he sent a proxy - a young woman who identified herself as Apache actress Sacheen Littlefeather - to protest Hollywood's treatment of American Indians. In her speech she declined the award on his behalf. It was later discovered that her real name was Maria Cruz, she wasn't an Apache, and in 1970 she had won the Miss American Vampire contest.

His next film, Last Tango in Paris (1972), was so rife with controversy it received an X rating. But it was hailed by critics and Brando picked up another Oscar nod.

Brando went on to roles in big films like Apocalypse Now and Superman - some said he ruined the former with his over-the-top, improvised performance.

"Last Tango in Paris required a lot of emotional arm wrestling with myself," the actor wrote in his autobiography, "and when it was finished, I decided that I wasn't ever again going to destroy myself emotionally to make a movie."

His final Academy Award nomination was for best supporting actor in A Dry, White Season (1989). Starring with Matthew Broderick in The Freshman (1990) with Johnny Depp in Don Juan DeMarco (1995) and Robert De Niro in The Score (2001) Brando was blustery and, critics said, bad.

Never one to memorize his lines very well - he was a known improviser- he stopped trying and read cue cards or had off-camera crew whisper lines he heard over headphones.

Brando's personal life was equally troubled and soap-operatic. He had at least nine children with his three ex-wives and several other women. In 2002, his Guatemalan housekeeper filed suit against him for 0 million for damages resulting from their 14-year affair and support for their three children. The case was eventually settled, but she reportedly threatened to reopen the case after Brando fell behind in child support payments.

"With women," Brando once said, "I've got a long bamboo pole with a leather loop on the end. I slip the loop around their necks so they can't get away or come too close. Like catching snakes."

One of Brando's many biographers, Patricia Bosworth, quoted a late-in-life ex-girlfriend of Brando's who, while watching TV with him, clicked on Streetcar. They watched a while, and then Brando said, "Oh God, I was beautiful then. But I'm much nicer now."