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.
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: