The legendary actress revealed in an intim@te chat with Jessica Chastain unpublished details of the relationship she had for almost a decade with the protagonist of The Godfather
Rita Moreno is one of the great living legends of Hollywood and at 90 years old she has a lot to tell. After having participated in the new version of Love Without Barriers (the film that established her in 1961), the actress shared with her colleague Jessica Chastain an intim@te and emotional talk in which both reviewed their careers and in which Moreno provided unknown details of the almost decade-long romance she had with Marlon Brando.
In the talk, “Actors on Actors,” organized by Variety, Chastain expressed interest in that relationship that was born on the set of Desirée, Napoleon's lover, in 1954. And Moreno did not mince words. “He and I had a relationship for almost eight years. Finally, it was exciting to be with Marlon. Oh my gosh, 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. It had all the ingredients of a doormat,” she revealed.
The actress explained that Brando liked women too much and that even though she wanted to hide his affairs from him, she ended up confessing them to him. “Every time he lied, I looked at him and said, 'Marlon, look at me.' And he would start sketching, I don't want to use the bad word, that poop-eating smile,” she recalled.
“I could read it like a book. That is why he loved me and that is why he mistreated me in so many ways,” I continue. And she revealed: “I tried to end my life with pills at his house. That's how I tried to do it. I didn't understand that if I was going to kill this pathetic, sad, downtrodden Rita, the rest of Rita was going to go with me too. He didn't really seem to understand that. But that was the attempt. “It was an attempt.”
Chastain wanted to know what happened after that episode. “After that, a few years later, we filmed together again [The Night of the Following Day, in 1969]. The interesting thing is that he wanted to return. I was married and had a beautiful daughter, Fernanda. He was ready to try again, but I didn't want to. And he did it,” she recalled.
However, that second attempt was no different. “He lost a big part of himself, I think. The good part of him, the good Marlon that Rita loved. It was very complicated. Very, very complicated,” he summarized.
In an interview for the BBC in 2013, Moreno had defined her relationship with Brando as a storm: “My relationship with Marlon was like a storm. It was sensual, divine and entertaining, but more than anything an obsession. "It was like cocaine." That year he had published his memoirs, in which he gave an account of his activism against racism - because, it is known, Hollywood prefers blondes - and also reviewed his romances with some of the most desired men in the world. twentieth century. About Brando, she explained: “He loved women and I wanted him to be faithful to me, but that was impossible.”
In December of last year, Moreno decided to provide more details and, in a talk with him on the American program The View, he confessed what was the great revenge that he plotted against Brando and his continued unhappiness. “I found lingerie at his house which, of course, broke my heart. I went home crying. I was naive. And she was also angry, just angry. The next day they called me on the phone and I heard: 'Miss Moreno? I'm Colonel Parker, my client is Elvis Presley. Elvis was watching her in the restaurant at the 20th Century Fox studios and he liked what he saw,'” she began.
And when Colonel Parker offered her a meeting with Presley, she Moreno did not hesitate: “I thought about those underwear I found and I told him: 'Yes, I will do it! (...) It didn't take long until [Brando] found out. He started throwing chairs. He was very angry. It was wonderful,” concluded the actress.
