Marlon Brando was one of the most influential actors of the 20th century, transfixing audiences with his menacing presence in classic films such as A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront.

Now his image, on and off screen, as a man who was resentful of the world and full of self-loathing, is being challenged with the discovery of previously unseen home movies and photographs – some of which are published for the first time in The Times today.

The footage, from the 1950s and 1960s, which is to be shown for the first time at the Cannes Film Festival this weekend, features the star clowning around, apparently without a care in the world.

In one scene, he can be seen sticking a lettuce leaf up his nose, apparently doing an impression of a walrus. In another, he is making paper planes out of the pages of a script. Elsewhere, he can be seen relaxing, walking on a beach, fishing and enjoying a sunset with his family.

This latest discovery gives an extraordinary insight into the man who is said to have revolutionised acting. The home movies of his beloved Tahiti have just been discovered among his many belongings at his Los Angeles house, where he lived from 1960 until his death in 2004. They have now been released by Brando’s estate.

Speaking to The Times in Cannes, Mike Medavoy, one of the estate’s trustees, described the home movies as “wonderful – so personal, so illustrative of the other side of Marlon”.

He said that they were as “good a portrayal of the man as I’ve seen”. Mr Medavoy knew the star well, having worked on three of his films, including Apocalypse Now. They also lived close to each another. Brando made his name on Broadway as the brutal Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire in 1947. He went on to star in more than 40 films, and became famous for his raw sensuality and a mesmerising presence that was to inspire generations of actors.

His first film was in 1950, when he played an embittered ex-GI in The Men. A year later he recreated his 1947 Broadway performance in Elia Kazan’s A Streetcar Named Desire, for which he was nominated for the first of several Oscars. After years of box-office obscurity, Brando was propelled back into the limelight with his performance as the Mafia boss Don Corleone in The Godfather, for which he famously refused to accept an Oscar.

The previously unseen footage has been made available for a documentary commissioned by the film channel Turner Classic Movies.

Mimi Freedman, the film’s producer, said that the new material showed another side to the rebellious son of a drunken mother whose disagreeable onset behaviour in the 1960s led almost every prominent studio and director to reject him, until his comeback with The Godfather in 1972.

“It’s pretty extraordinary,” she said of the new footage. “It gives a glimpse into the real Brando. He was such a mystery to people. There are stories about him being strange, a recluse, odd. But here are shots of him where he’s acting like a kid, having fun, hamming it up for the camera, singing.”

There are also photographs, taken in 1950, which show Brando as a relaxed young man with his family, chopping wood and with his dog.

The star was known to have been scathing about acting, partly, as the documentary reveals, because he started doing it at an early age in an attempt to distract his mother from her drunken stupors.

Mr Medavoy recalled how, when he once asked Brando why he was repelled even by the word “acting”, the star replied: “It’s not the acting – it’s the celebrity. I like to go to the market, to buy toilet paper and not be bothered by some guy with a camera.”

It was in Tahiti that Brando was able to live the life of a noncelebrity, he said.

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