I happened to meet Brando once, around spring or summer 1973 … This was on Catalina Island (a large private island, off southern California). I was working alone on an isolated rocky shore, setting up food web experiments, and had not paid much attention to a man taking a nap on a wooden pier nearby.
When he got up and walked down towards me across tide pools and rocks, I recognized him at once: Marlon Brando. After a while (and a lively discussion about the life and prospects of a young marine researcher), I told him in earnest how much I admired his fight for the civil rights of the AmerIndian natives, and how much his total freedom on the screen was a major inspiration to people like me.
He replied (in French – he spoke very good French) that this was an illusion, that an actor was never free, that he had to fight all the time with ‘stupid’ (sic) movie directors and with ‘dumm’ Hollywood studios.
He went further and told me that, if he could start his life all over again, he would much rather be a marine scientist than anything else… because – this is important – no one was as free, in his perception, as a marine scientist. Maybe he was just trying to say something nice before leaving, but it certainly made a deep, lasting impression on me.
That was my first and last encounter with Marlon Brando. He was a magnificent, fascinating, highly creative, highly intelligent man. He would have made a great marine researcher.
Frédéric Briand opening CIESM Congress in 2019.
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