Had he not been an actor, Marlon Brando once wrote, he would have become a criminal?specifically, a con artist. Take him at his word. Too many complain that Brando, the greatest actor of his generation, wasted his life in futile rebellions and left far too few masterworks in his wake, especially measured against his potential; but considering his sincere confession of criminal potential, we can be grateful for the little we do have. The actor who starred so unforgettably in A Streetcar Named Desire, The Wild One, On the Waterfront, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and Last Tango in Paris certainly owes no apologies to posterity.

The Movie Icon series: People talk about Hollywood glamour, about studios that had more stars than there are in heaven, about actors who weren't actors but were icons. Other people talk about these things, TASCHEN shows you. Movie Icons is a series of photo books that feature the most famous personalities in the history of cinema. These 192-page books are visual biographies of the stars. For each title, series editor Paul Duncan has painstaking selected approximately 150 high quality enigmatic and sumptuous portraits, colorful posters and lobby cards, rare film stills, and previously unpublished candid photos showing the stars as they really are. These images are accompanied by concise introductory essays by leading film writers; each book also includes a chronology, a filmography, and a bibliography, and is peppered with apposite quotes from the movies and from life.