Short answers, pulled from the story.
Marlon Brando won Best Actor Oscars for On the Waterfront (1954), playing dockworker Terry Malloy, and for The Godfather (1972), playing crime boss Vito Corleone. He declined the second award, sending Sacheen Littlefeather to the ceremony to protest the treatment of American Indians by the film industry.
Brando refused the Best Actor Oscar for The Godfather in protest of the treatment of American Indians by the film industry and on television, as well as in connection with the Wounded Knee Occupation of 1973, which was occurring at the time of the ceremony. He sent actress Sacheen Littlefeather to deliver his statement.
Brando credited Stella Adler and later director Elia Kazan as his primary teachers. He studied the Stanislavski system under Adler at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School. He explicitly rejected claims that Lee Strasberg of the Actors Studio had taught him anything.
Brando was paid $3.7 million for two weeks of work on the 1978 film Superman, playing Jor-El. When producers refused to pay him the same percentage for the sequel, he blocked them from using footage he had already filmed for Superman II.
Brando made his Broadway debut in 1944 in the bittersweet drama I Remember Mama, playing the son of Mady Christians. He went on to win Theater World Awards for his performances in Candida and Truckline Cafe in 1946, and New York Drama Critics voted him Most Promising Young Actor for his role in Truckline Cafe.
Brando died on the 1st of July 2004, at the age of 80, of respiratory failure from pulmonary fibrosis with congestive heart failure at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. He also suffered from diabetes and liver cancer. His cause of death was initially withheld, with his lawyer citing privacy concerns.