Anna Kashfi | Actress and Brando wife, 80

Anna Kashfi, 80, who played exotic beauties on screen and who went through a brief, turbulent marriage to Marlon Brando, died of natural causes Aug. 16 at a care center in Woodland, Wash.

Ms. Kashfi was married to Brando for 11 months before their separation in 1958. Their stormy relationship and her sometimes frantic attempts to secure custody of their son, Christian, generated headlines for years.

In her 1979 memoir, Brando for Breakfast, she called the actor "a balding, paunchy hypochondriac" and "an egomaniac, a rock upon which other egos founder."

She said he was physically and emotionally abusive. "Within his being lurks the unregenerate soul of a Cro-Magnon," she wrote.

In court testimony, Brando contended that his ex-wife was a violent woman addicted to alcohol and prescription drugs.

Ms. Kashfi's ethnic background was also the subject of dispute. She said she was the daughter of a wealthy Indian architect; a British couple said she was their estranged daughter who spent her early years with them in India. Baptism records and other documents backed up their account.

Among her movies were The Mountain (1956), with Spencer Tracy; Battle Hymn (1957), with Rock Hudson; and Cowboy (1958), with Glenn Ford.

In her later years, Ms. Kashfi, the widow of an electronics executive, lived modestly. In 2009, a French journalist interviewed her in her rundown mobile home east of San Diego. - L.A. Times