Actor Marlon Brando is perpetually fascinating, both for the power of the characters he portrayed and for his tumultuous personal life. Bestselling biographer Stefan Kanfer seamlessly intertwines the man and his work to give us this illuminating appraisal.

Kanfer takes us from Brando’s troubled childhood to his arrival in New York in the 1940s, where he studied with the legendary Stella Adler and became, at age twenty-three, the star of Broadway in A Streetcar Named Desire. He offers a detailed analysis of each of Brando’s films, showing the evolution of Brando’s singular genius, and brings into focus his ambivalence toward his craft as well as the tragedies that shadowed his last years. What emerges is a definitive life of an iconic artist whose work forever altered the landscape of show business.