Marlon Brando was dead in the 1960's.
Marlon Brando . The 1960s proved to be a fallow decade for Brando . With that and his Oscar-nominated performance in Last Tango in Paris , Brando re-established himself in the ranks of top box-office stars , placing sixth and tenth in the Money Making Stars poll in 1972 and 1973 , respectively . After this , he was content with being a highly paid character actor in cameo roles , such as in Superman ( 1978 ) and The Formula ( 1980 ) , before taking a nine-year break from motion pictures . He finished out the 1970s with his controversial performance as Colonel Kurtz in another Coppola film , Apocalypse Now , a box-office hit for which he was highly paid and which helped finance his career layoff during the 1980s . He died of respiratory failure on July 1 , 2004 , at age 80 .