Christian Brando

Marlon and Kashfi met in 1955, and Kashfi became pregnant in 1957.

Christian Devi Brando (May 11, 1958 – January 26, 2008) was an American actor who was one of the eleven children of actor Marlon Brando, and the only one Brando had with his first wife, former actress Anna Kashfi.

Christian was born in Los Angeles on May 11, 1958, the product of an affair between Marlon Brando and Anna Kashfi, an actress born to a British family in colonial India.

They married in 1958 and divorced one year later.

Christian was shuttled between his mother and father.

His parents became increasingly hostile and abusive toward each other, and engaged in a protracted custody battle.

The 12-year custody battle and his mother's uncontrollable temper due to her abuse of drugs and alcohol had a major effect on young Christian.

Marlon eventually won custody of Christian, who was then 13 years old.

At that time, Marlon had described his son as a "basket case of emotional disorder".

Marlon was a distant father and spent little time with young Christian, who was raised by nannies and servants.

Christian moved between Hollywood and Tetiaroa, his father's private island near Tahiti.

Marlon continued to have relationships with multiple women by whom he fathered numerous children.

Years later, while commenting on his childhood, Christian said, "The family kept changing shape, I'd sit down at the breakfast table and say, 'Who are you?'"

Christian Brando was named after his father's longtime friend French film director Christian Marquand who later directed Marlon in the 1968 film Candy.

As a child, Christian had two small roles in movies: in The Secret Life of an American Wife and I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!, both released in 1968.

In 1972, while his father was abroad in France filming Last Tango in Paris, Christian was kidnapped by his mother, who took him from school, then brought him to a gang of hippie friends in Baja California, Mexico.

Apparently, she had promised them $10,000 if they would hide Christian away.

When she refused to pay, they took and hid the boy; a posse of private detectives hired by Marlon, from an agency named "The Investigators", led by private investigator Jay J. Armes, rescued him late one night.

He was found living in a tent and ill with bronchial pneumonia.

His mother was arrested near the Mexican border after being pulled over for drunk driving and disorderly behavior.

Back in court his father was awarded sole custody.

During his teen years, he dropped out of high school and began drinking and using LSD.

He was an occasional actor but was not interested in being in the spotlight.

He ran away from home to Washington state to move in with family friends, something that his father later approved and supported him in.

His father would visit him there and later purchased a remote cabin for him where he practised artistic welding at the age of 22.

He would divide his time between there and his father's Hollywood Hills residence.

He appeared in four other films and four made-for-TV productions, sometimes using the alias "Gary Brown", between 1980 and 1990.

He played a killer in the Sacra Corona Unita (the Quarter Italian Mafia) in the film La Posta in gioco ("The Prize at Stake"), filmed in Southern Italy in 1987.

On May 16, 1990, Brando fatally shot Dag Drollet, the boyfriend of his half-sister Cheyenne, at his father's residence on Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills.

The family drama and trial were heavily publicized that year.

On May 16, 1990, Brando fatally shot Dag Drollet, the boyfriend of his half-sister Cheyenne in the living room of his father's house in Beverly Hills, California.

Drollet was in a four-year relationship with Cheyenne, who was 8 months pregnant by Drollet at the time.

A few days before the incident, Drollet had flown in from Tahiti to Los Angeles to visit Cheyenne.

Cheyenne was visiting her father along with her mother, and both were staying at Marlon Brando's residence.

Marlon Brando had known the Drollet family for years; however, Christian Brando met Dag Drollet for the first time several hours before shooting him dead.

He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to prison in 1991.

He was released in 1996.

In 2004, information introduced at the trial of Robert Blake for the 2001 murder of his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, exposed Brando's relationship with Bakley and his possible involvement in her murder.

In 2005, Brando pleaded no contest to spousal abuse of his then-wife Deborah and was given probation.

He died of pneumonia on January 26, 2008, aged 49.