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Wed 25 March 2026 16:45, UK
Cinema history is rife with legendary double-acts, but had it come to pass, the combination of Mick Jagger and Marlon Brando would have definitely been one of the most unusual.
At the time, the Rolling Stones frontman hadn’t even made his acting debut, and being thrown in at the deep end and left to fend for himself against one of the all-time greats would have been one of the hottest baptisms of fire that any first-timer could have possibly been given.
On the other hand, Brando wasn’t quite firing on all cylinders. He was still a couple of years away from returning to the top of the Hollywood pile when he claimed his second Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’ in The Godfather and rejuvenated his career in the process, but he was still Marlon Brando.
The peacocking rockstar and the transformative method man were the oddest of odd couples on paper, and while you can’t say that a lot of movies would have benefited from the absence of a certified icon and one of the industry’s top-tier thespians, Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg’s Performance turned out alright.
Having never appeared in a movie before, Jagger doubled down when Ned Kelly and Performance were released months apart in 1970, and he acquitted himself impressively. Now regarded as one of the greatest British films ever made, the picture was highly controversial at the time for its depictions of wanton sex and graphic violence, with James Fox stepping into the role earmarked for Brando.
His criminal scarpers after murdering a rival in an act of self-defence, leading him into the waiting arms of Jagger’s hedonistic rocker. Initially, Cammell had planned to make the character of Chas an American who went on the run and found themselves in London, but plans changed when Brando couldn’t commit.
“He and producer Sandy Lieberson had a few meetings with Marlon, one of them in Marlon’s hotel room with Marlon in bed, and Marlon said he was interested,” Fox revealed. “So Donald did a rewrite that would turn this London gangster character into an American gangster on the run.”
Of course, Brando saying that he was interested in something was nowhere close to a guarantee that he would actually do it, and as was the case many times before and since, the mercurial star declined the opportunity to spar with Jagger in Performance, opening the door for Fox to take his place.
The movie turned out just fine without him, even if the studios were so skittish about the content that it was shelved for over a year after the end of principal photography, but the prospect of seeing Brando and Jagger going head to head remains a fascinating what-if.
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