Throughout the late 1960s and into the early 1980s, he had a tempestuous, long-term relationship with actress Jill Banner. The controversial movie was a hit however, and Brando made the list of Top Ten Box Office Stars for the last time. In 1947, Brando performed a screen test for an early Warner Brothers script for the novel Rebel Without a Cause (1944), which bore no relation to the film eventually produced in 1955.

In hindsight, I guess my emotional insecurity as a child—the frustrations of not being allowed to be who I was, of wanting love and not being able to get it, of realizing that I was of no value—may have helped me as an actor, at least in a small way. It is alleged that Brando once fished out a frog from a pond to take a bite out of it before tossing it back into the water. A review of Brando's performance in the opening assessed that Brando was "still building his character, but at present fails to impress. The film features several intense, graphic scenes involving Brando, including Paul anally raping Jeanne using butter as a lubricant, which it was alleged was not consensual. His portrayal of the rebellious motorcycle gang leader Johnny Strabler in The Wild One (1953) became an emblem of the era's generational gap.Relations between Brando and costar Frank Sinatra were also frosty, with Stefan Kanfer observing: "The two men were diametrical opposites: Marlon required multiple takes; Frank detested repeating himself. Hollywood legend devastated to find his lover Grace Kelly naked with Marlon Brando Grace Kelly was the Hollywood ice queen who became a real princess but behind the scenes her sizzling sex life included many of cinema's biggest stars - often at the same time.

Brando also adopted Petra Brando-Corval (born 1972), the daughter of his assistant Caroline Barrett and novelist James Clavell. The film drew attention for its lengthy and troubled production, as Eleanor Coppola's documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse documents: Brando showed up on the set overweight, Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack, and severe weather destroyed several expensive sets.Arguably one of the greatest actors in Hollywood history, Brando’s rich legacy included him becoming a cultural icon who had the image of an “angry young man – the delinquent, the tough, the rebel – who stood at the centre of [our] common experience. He received further praise and his first Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for his performance as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (1954), which remains a watershed moment in the history of Hollywood, and his work continues to be studied and interpreted. to his house to address an “urgent matter” which involved Brando’s desire to accumulate thousands of electric eels in his swimming pool wherein he could harness their power to use it for the house. After the 1955 Oscar ceremony on March 30, Crosby went to Kelly's hotel room at around 3am, perhaps to distract himself from losing to Marlon Brando for On The Waterfront.

In 1971, Michael Winner directed him in the British horror film The Nightcomers with Stephanie Beacham, Thora Hird, Harry Andrews and Anna Palk. Brando has also been immortalized in music; most notably, he was mentioned in the lyrics of " It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City" by Bruce Springsteen, in which one of the opening lines read "I could walk like Brando right in to the sun", and in Neil Young's " Pocahontas" as a tribute to his lifetime support of Native Americans and in which he is depicted sitting by a fire with Neil and Pocahontas.Though their relationship cooled, they remained friends for the rest of Sato's life, with her dividing her time between Los Angeles and Tetiaroa in her later years. Bankhead had turned down the role of Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire, which Williams had written for her, to tour the play for the 1946–1947 season. Paramount Pictures President Stanley Jaffe told an exasperated Coppola: "As long as I'm president of this studio, Marlon Brando will not be in this picture, and I will no longer allow you to discuss it.