Although various actors receive the label of “legend” and “icon” upon death, few actors are distinguished by ending eras and initiating revolutions. With Marlon Brando’s arrival on stage and screen, a veritable overthrowing occurred in what was acceptable in performance. Not unlike Elvis Presley’s presaging of Rock’n’Roll, Brando’s emergence in entertainment ended one epoch and foretold of another. The new era in acting was to allow for a new level of characterization—more powerful, visceral, and genuine.

The revolutionary gesture that Brando invoked was to allow full expression of the primitive, authentic, and darker aspects of the human experience. The 1940s—the decade prior to Brando’s rise to eminence in film—featured actors that portrayed the more heroic, moral, and decent potentials of the collective psyche. Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, and Gregory Peck typically depicted gallant characters on which the public could orient their moral compass. The benefit from these roles was obvious—that we could all aspire to emulate the civility and conscience of these heroes. However, as much as the positive aspects of being human were emphasized by these characters, it was often the case that the fullness of human possibilities was not allowed to shine through. It was as if a tremendous reservoir of psychological energy was accessed by these actors in service of a more restrained, refined style, and it took Brando to show us exactly what was being repressed.

Through films beginning in the 1950s, Brando revealed a rich authenticity, spontaneity, depth, brooding, and sexuality that lay dormant in American film. Brando brought a potency and naturalism to screen acting that was nourished by roots that ran deeper and reached more broadly than the type typically endorsed by the studio system of the Golden Age of Hollywood. While Brando’s acting style was at one turn revelatory, it was also strangely familiar, as his onscreen persona reminded viewers that this is how people actually behaved in real life situations.

Brando was more deeply in touch with his daimon than other actors, a term used by the ancient Greeks that roughly translates as “creative and essential spirit.” From “daimon” we receive the English “demon” which shows the connection between our own creativity and our own darkness. As psychologists from Carl Jung to Rollo May have understood, creativity and our capacity for the dark side of life stem from the same source and that one cannot fully exist without the other. It is through our daimon (and our inner demons) that we ride the perilous edge between destructive, depraved upheaval and spontaneous, creative expression. Being in touch with his daimon on a deep level, Brando opened up this dimension in an era when this aspect of the collective psyche seemed to be thoroughly repressed.

In astrology, the daimonic (or “demonic”) is loosely affiliated with the three outer planets but is arguably most associated with the symbol of Pluto. Most often correlated with themes of sex, death, and transformation, Pluto represents powerful, uncompromising energy that is both creative and destructive. Typically in life, we create strategies that allow us to have the illusion that we can control the force of nature that is Pluto, opening up to it only when it is absolutely necessary. Most of us employ this strategy, to great cost. We might even argue that this was the primary modus operandi in screen acting prior to Brando’s premiere in film. An emphasis (if not overemphasis) in film roles was placed on acting technique, the appearance of invulnerability, and a highly affected style. As one commentator put it, after Brando, this stylized convention of acting simply looked “silly.” Brando opened the acting palette up to the demonic and the astrological Pluto. Brando’s acting was so powerful because he allowed himself to be a conduit to this chaotic, transformative force. Not one to rely upon manners, conventions, and formalities, Brando affirmed the demonic and Plutonic through spontaneous expression, vulnerability, presence, and depth.

Brando’s birth chart is characterized thoroughly by Pluto. With the Sun and Moon conjoined to square Pluto and with Mars opposing Pluto, Brando, it would seem, was destined to have a high degree of the Plutonic archetype manifest throughout his personal and professional life. The expressions of Pluto through his acting and life are numerous. Upon making his second screen appearance in A Streetcar Named Desire, it was evident to all that Brando exuded a sexuality that may have been considered taboo before him. Certainly not a quality that you can feign or hide, Brando’s level of erotic energy had a particular primitive and feral quality to it. Brando’s characters also had a particular subterranean quality, as if emerging from the shadows to appear in the light of day. He represented the more brutal, evolutionary side of life in all its pain, richness, and intensity—all thoroughly Plutonian in its quality.

Perhaps Brando’s most vivid expression of the Plutonic—and his birth chart itself—came in his ability to spontaneously move from the emotionally vulnerable and expressive to the powerfully ferocious and cruel. His ability to shift modes organically from the tender and soft to the explosive and rageful was well noted by colleagues and peers. We can see this dynamic mirrored in his birth chart with the tense aspects formed between Mars, the Moon, and Pluto. With Pluto intensifying the expressions of both planets, we see emotional depth and receptiveness, on the one hand, and brute power and rage on the other. Perhaps this dialectic was never captured so poignantly as in his portrayal in Last Tango in Paris in which Brando swings between the reflective and nurturing to the violent and wrathful, often in the same scene.

Actors that carry Pluto’s themes and expressions for a society often have Pluto in tense aspect in their birth charts. These actors allow us to see what lies underneath our societal conditioning and permit us to see a wider range of possibilities: our wickedness, darkness, vulnerability, intensity, sexuality, and creativity. Actors like James Cagney (t-square involving Pluto), Jack Nicholson (t-square involving Pluto), and Sean Penn (square involving Pluto) have greater access to their own daimon—demons—and are able to harness them for their own performances to great effect.

As Brando’s acting and biography can attest, opening up to the power, intensity, and vulnerability of Pluto’s archetype is often a double edged sword—one is more receptive to creativity, depth, and passion but one must allow for the possibility of more pain, tragedy, and the sacrifice of control. Brando’s life and career was as chaotic, tragic, and destructive as it was powerful, triumphant, and fertile. Allowing one’s fullness to be in this world is intimately bound with allowing one’s demons to be full-voting members of one’s inner congress. Perhaps film director Milos Foreman said it best: “If you want a jungle you have to allow for the butterflies as much as the tigers.”

Marlon Brando’s Birth Time (from birth certificate):

April 3 1924
11:00 PM
Omaha Nebraska