Actor Marlon Brando had a miserable childhood with alcoholic parents who showed him almost no affection, according to an account of the actor's early life published on Saturday.
In extracts from his autobiography which appear in Britain's Guardian newspaper, the American star writes: "I've often thought I would have been much better off if I had grown up in an orphanage."Brando was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1924, the youngest of the three children of Marlon Brando Sr. and his wife Dorothy.
He writes: "At first I was unaware of my mother's nipping from the bottle, or the unhappiness of my father, who was also an alcoholic."
He says his father was a hard-drinking traveling salesman who frequented brothels.
"Most of my childhood memories of my father are of being ignored. I was his namesake, but nothing I did ever pleased or even interested him," he writes.
"I was never rewarded by him with a comment, a look or a hug."
Brando adds: "My mother was a delicate, funny woman who loved music and learning, but was not much more affectionate than my father . . . she was seldom home when I was growing up."
He says her drinking got worse as he neared his teens, the family moving to Libertyville near Chicago.
"At 14, I'd march door to door through Chicago's skid row on a sunny afternoon, push open the door of each bar in succession, peer into a dark cavern and try to spot her on one of the stools," he recalls.
But he says when he once found his father slapping and hitting his mother in their bedroom, he protected her, bellowing, "If you ever hit her again, I'll kill you." His father stopped.
"It was probably the only time in his life that he backed off from a physical challenge," Brando says.
The autobiography, "Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me" is scheduled to be released September 15.