DIANE KEATON, costar, The Godfather (1972)

They really had a party [while shooting the wedding that opens the movie]. Real alcohol was being consumed. It was extraordinary. I saw [Brando] dance with Talia Shire and it was just a dream the way he danced. Everything about him was so graceful; he was still an extremely beautiful man. A big old beauty. Everything about him was kind of unearthly like an animal.

The one thing that has been disturbing to me in the tone of some of the obituaries is that even in death they were never satisfied with him. It was never enough. I mean, what did they expect from his fucking genius? He can't just be the most astonishing genius actor ever, ever on film. What about Last Tango ? If you only do one genius thing you're a genius. The rest of us are just diddling about, you know, just trying to be good so we're not comparable.

GORDON WILLIS, cinematographer, The Godfather (1972)

He never came to dailies. It takes an extremely smart actor to come to dailies and not start readjusting himself and his performance. Because they really are looking at something that probably won't end up on the screen, you know. He knew that.

He'd use cue cards sometimes, or he'd write [his lines] on the cuff of his shirt or in the palm of his hand, on the desk, on another actor. His excuse for that was, well, people don't really know what they're going to say. He used [the searching for his lines] performance-wise.

A lesser actor would have been a muscle-bound, overblown big mouth in the movie. And he wasn't. He and Francis had a good fix on the character-you know, some guy in an old sweater who lives in Brooklyn and is running a dynasty of hit men. He did it well.