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Marlon Brando, by the early 70s, was back in the spotlight. After years of erratic behavior and fading relevance, he clawed his way back with a powerhouse performance as Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather and followed it up with the bold and divisive Last Tango in Paris.
Hollywood, the never-forgiving movie industry, which had once rolled its eyes at his antics, now praised him again as the gold standard.
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Around that same time, Brando noticed a younger face rising fast. He was a wild one with a sharp mind who was not following the usual Hollywood script. He had turned down the role of Michael Corleone, citing his non-Italian roots, and instead veered toward films that broke rules, such as Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, and The Last Detail (all while being under the heavy rotation of drugs like cocaine and marijuana).
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That actor was Jack Nicholson, and Brando wasn’t immediately sold on him. He saw talent, sure, but also unpredictability and maybe even danger. The two couldn’t have seemed more different.
Then came the twist. Nicholson bought the house next to Brando’s. It was not just nearby, but so close they shared a gate. Brando, who was never shy with his judgments, saw a drug-fueled party machine move in and he wasn’t thrilled.
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According to Far Out Magazine, Nicholson himself once admitted to this, “At first, he thought of me as a threat to his home. He was strictly against dope, and he thought I was a criminal.”
Apparently, Brando didn’t like drugs, not out of virtue but because they bored him. They weren’t part of his mystique or his method; subsequently, he perceived them as reckless. So when a neighbour known for seeing “the face of God,” having “castration fantasies, homoerotic fantasies, and revelations about not being wanted as an infant,” showed up next door, Brando felt more invaded than intrigued.
What made it worse was that Nicholson had looked up to Brando for years. “When I was growing up in New Jersey, one of my summer jobs was working as an assistant manager of a local movie theatre,” Nicholson once told Rolling Stone. “I must have seen every performance of On the Waterfront, twice a night. You just couldn’t take your eyes off the guy. He was spellbinding.”
Marlon Brando & Jack Nicholson on the set of The Missouri Breaks (1976) pic.twitter.com/5sUTN1oA4a
— Cinéfilos (@_Cinefilos_) March 22, 2016
As a result, for Nicholson to find out that his hero saw him as some sort of stoned vandal must have stung. But as time passed, perceptions changed. Marlon realised that Nicholson wasn’t only a drug-fueled rebel, he was also smart and respectful.
“I learned he wasn’t nearly as reclusive or serious as people thought,” Nicholson mused while reflecting on their friendship that lasted three decades. “We’d talk in the driveway like any other neighbors. Though I guess most neighbors don’t leave their underpants in your fridge.”
The two icons who stood at opposite ends of Hollywood’s spectrum somehow found a common ground.
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