Anna Kashfi was a British film actress who had a brief Hollywood career in the 1950s but was better known for her turbulent marriage to film star Marlon Brando and the controversies surrounding their son. Kashfi was born in Chakradharpur, India, to William Patrick O’Callaghan, an Irish-born Londoner, and his Welsh wife, Phoebe. Kashfi was raised in Calcutta until the age of 13, when her family relocated to Cardiff, Wales.
Kashfi retreated halfway in her 1979 book, Brando for Breakfast, and claimed she is half-Indian, claiming William O’Callaghan was her stepfather. Kashfi’s biological father was Indian, she claimed, and she was the result of a “unregistered alliance” between him and her mother.
However, when questioned earlier in life about her daughter’s heritage, her mother had told the press “There is no Indian blood in my family or my husband’s family”. The actress’s first film director, Edward Dmytryk, stated in a New York Times interview (titled “Kashfi Called Welsh”) the day before her wedding to Brando that he knew her real surname was Irish but assumed she was half-Indian.
What happened to Marlon Brando’s first wife?
Anna Kashfi passed away on August 16 in Woodland, Washington.
