It was an offer he couldn’t refuse.
When Billy Zane got the chance to portray iconic late actor Marlon Brando in “Waltzing With Brando,” he knew it was the role of a lifetime.
“We’re so excited about the film. It’s coming out in the summertime in theaters. It’s been a passion project of mine for, like, six years,” he exclusively told The Post while on the red carpet for his new Western film “Day of Reckoning” on Monday.
When asked of there was an added pressure taking on the role of such a beloved actor, Zane responded, “There absolutely was.”
“We really wanted to tell the story — back to your question, yeah no pressure!” he quipped.
The “Titanic” star, 59, decided the way to embody one of the greatest actors of the 20th century was to follow Brando’s golden rule: “The only way to play him was as if he would, which is to not give a heck.”
“And to really approach it with the same looseness as he would. And to not obsess,” he told the Post. “That, I think, served in the end.”
“Waltzing With Brando,” which was written and directed by Bill Fishman, also stars Richard Dreyfuss, Mick Jagger’s son James Jagger, Jon Heder and Camille Razat.
The project follows Brando as he films the 1962 movie “Mutiny on the Bounty” and buys a tiny and uninhabitable island in Tahiti in the process.
Brando wanted to escape his life in Hollywood and find a path to sustainability, so he brings on Judge (Heder), an idealistic Los Angeles architect, to try and build the world’s first truly sustainable ecological retreat together.
Most of the movie is shot on the Tahitian island of Tetiaroa.
“Waltzing With Brando” debuted at the Italy’s Torino Film Festival in November 2024, with the festival’s director Giulio Base telling Variety, “You won’t believe it: he is possessed by Marlon Brando.”
The film is set to hit theaters this summer.
Brando was a beloved star whose Hollywood career spanned more than 50 years. He got his start in the 1940’s after being expelled from Shattuck Military Academy and heading to New York to work with the famed acting teacher Stella Adler.
Not even a year later, Brando was on Broadway in the play “I Remember Mama.”
Then in 1950, he made his film debut in war/romance movie “The Men,” but it wasn’t until 1951 that he shot to fame in “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
Three years later, Brando went on to win an Oscar for Best Actor for his work in the crime drama “On the Waterfront” in 1954.
By 1972, he took home his second Oscar as Vito Corleone in the iconic gangster film “The Godfather.”
Actress Penelope Ann Miller, who worked with Brando on the crime movie, recalled what the actor was like on set.
“He’s the Godfather,” she told People magazine in 2019. “My favorite memory was when he was actually trying to imitate me. And I am not kidding you, he really did a good job. He did my walk and a whole sassy thing and he is funny. He was funny, God bless his soul.”
“He was much funnier than you would think,” Miller mused, “because he didn’t do comedy if you think about it. He was always considered this intense, reclusive guy. And he was actually a real prankster and he loved to play games and he loved to trick people.”
She added that Brando “had a great sense of humor.”
The Oscar winner passed away in Los Angeles of lung failure at the age of 80 in 2004.
As Zane waits for “Waltzing With Brando” to hit theaters, he’s also been busy with the action-packed Western “Day of Reckoning,” where he plays Marshal Butch Hayden.
“I have always been a fan of the genre since … Howard Hawks and George Stevens. I think I’m a bigger fan of Westerns under censorship,” he explained to The Post. “Classic Westerns than a modern Western because it looks really painful. The old West looks horrible when you try and tell a story.”
“Everything’s done in studio. I’m a big fan of that art of his. It was really like opera,” expressed Zane. “It was highly theatrical. There was incredible mythology and I find it such an interesting export from America.”
“Day of Reckoning” hits theaters March 28.
