“[Marlon] Brando was an avid student and proponent of Stella Adler, from whom he learned the techniques of the Stanislavski System. This technique encouraged the actor to explore his own feelings and past experiences to fully realize the character being portrayed. Brando’s remarkable insight and sense of realism was evident early on. Adler used to recount that when teaching Brando, she had instructed the class to act like chickens, and added that a nuclear bomb was about to fall on them. Most of the class clucked and ran around wildly, but Brando sat calmly and pretended to lay an egg. Asked by Adler why he had chosen to react this way, he said, “I’m a chicken—What do I know about bombs?”
