By the time he made 1996's lacklustre The Island of Dr. Moreau, Brando had given up trying to memorise his lines and had them read to him via a radio earpiece.
But Brando mocked those who said he had wasted a "great" talent, saying that such adjectives should be reserved for history's great masters of painting and music, not for actors, who he said were paid to do what most people do all day long.
Far from basking in the glory of his worldwide acclaim, Brando retreated behind high walls in Los Angeles and in the 1960s, he left the US altogether to live on his private atoll in Tahiti.
But the money dangled in front of him by Hollywood was too tempting, particularly when he fell on hard times, as millions of dollars in legal bills mounted as he paid to defend his son Christian when he was accused of the 1990 killing of his daughter Cheyenne's lover.
In his 1994 autobiography Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me, Brando said he "could draw no conclusions about my life because it is a continuously evolving and unfolding process. ... I haven't found answers. It's been a painful odyssey dappled with moments of joy and laughter."
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