American actor and paradigm of the technique of interpretation of the Actor's Studio of New York. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska, and made debut in Broadway in 1944. He was discovered thanks to his work as Stanley Kowalski in a called street car desire (1947), of Tennessee Williams, personage to size for the style of naturalistic interpretation of the method of Lee Strasberg. This work took to the screen in 1951 by director Elia Kazan with great success.

Since then it has shown his interpretativa versatility incarnating very different personages, from Marco Antonio in Julio Caesar (1953, of Joseph Mankiewicz) to the motorist gamberro of Wild! (1954, of Laszlo Benedek).

It received the Oscar to the best actor in the law of silence (1954), of Elia Kazan, and although it again gained it by his paper in the padrino (1972), of Francis Ford Coppola, rejected it in signal of protest by the operation of the American Indians on the part of the industry of the cinema. Other films indicated in their race, have been Alive Zapata (1952), also of Elia Kazan; The tea house of the moon of August (1956), Daniel Mann; The impenetrable face (1961), that directed he himself; Rebellion on board (1962), of Lewis Milestone, new version of the classic one of 1935 directed by Frank Lloyd; The last tango in Paris (1972), of Bernardo Bertolucci; Missouri (1976), of Arthur Penn; Apocalypse now (1979), of Francis Ford Coppola; A barren white station (1989), of Euzhan Palcy, and the novice (1990), of Andrew Bergman. In 1966 it bought an island in the Pacific, where it has resided on and off.