West Side Story's Rita Moreno Tried To "End Her Life" After Being Mistreated By Marlon Brando - 8days Skip to main content

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West Side Story's Rita Moreno Tried To "End Her Life" After Being Mistreated By Marlon Brando

Rita Moreno and Marlo Brando were in an eight-year relationship in the 1950s.

West Side Story's Rita Moreno Tried  To "End Her Life" After Being Mistreated By Marlon Brando

Rita Moreno has said she tried to "end her life" after being "mistreated" by Marlon Brando.

The 90-year-old actress — who is known for playing the role of Anita in the original film version of West Side Story — claimed that while her eight-year relationship with late Hollywood icon Marlon Brando in the 1950s was "exciting", he was a "bad guy” towards women.

Speaking to fellow actress Jessica Chastain for Variety's Actors on Actors series, she said: "Ultimately, it was exciting to be with Marlon. Oh, my God, it was exciting. He was extraordinary in many, many ways, but he was a bad guy. He was a bad guy when it came to women. I was such a different person then. I had all the makings of a doormat.

"So whenever he lied, I would look at him and I'd say, 'Marlon, look at me.' And he'd start to grin this kind of — I don't want to use the bad word — that poop-eating grin. I could read him like a book and that's why he loved me, and that's why he mistreated me in so many ways. I tried to end my life with pills in his house. That's how I tried to do it."

Moreno, who's also in Steven Spielberg's remake of West Side Story, explained that she experienced confusion over wanting to kill the "trod-upon" version of herself.

She added: "I didn't understand that if I was going to kill this pathetic, sad, trod-upon Rita, the rest of Rita was also going to go with me. I really didn't seem to understand that. But that's what the attempt was. It was an attempt."

The Oscar-winning star — who was later married to her manager Leonard Gordon from 1965 until his death in 2010 — went on to reveal that Brando had wanted to reunite after she had settled down.

She said: "What's interesting is that he wanted to renew. I was now married. I had a beautiful child, Fernanda. He was ready to have a go again. I didn't want that. But he did. He lost a big part of himself, I think. The good part of him, the good Marlon that Rita loved. It was very complicated. Really, really complicated."

Watch Rita Moreno and Jessica Chastain's interview here:

West Side Story is still showing in cinemas. — BANG SHOWBIZ

Photo: TPG News/Click Photos



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