Oscar-winning actress Rita Moreno has revealed how her obsessive love for Marlon Brando almost killed her in her new memoir. During their eight-year affair, the actress best known for her role as Anita in “West Side Story,” said she had to endure chronic philandering, emotional abuse and a botched abortion, the New York Post reported. A sizable chunk of the book titled “Rita Moreno” is devoted to her torrid love affair with Brando. “He broke my heart and came close to crushing my very spirit with his physical infidelities and, worse, with his emotional betrayals,” Moreno, now 81, writes in her book. During their relationship, he married twice and fathered children with his wives. But Moreno said she became addicted to the challenge of winning him over and over again and in order to win him over, she started dating Dennis Hopper, then Elvis. When Moreno discovered she was pregnant with Brando’s child, she said Marlon immediately arranged for an abortion. Brando coldly arranged for a friend to pick up her after the illegal procedure, she revealed. But on her return home, Moreno began bleeding profusely. The abortion was botched – the fetus was dead, but still inside her. She was rushed to the hospital, where the fetus was surgically removed. But Brando felt he had been “taken” by the abortionist and he wanted his money back, she writes in the memoir. He then left Moreno to shoot “Mutiny on the Bounty,” where he promptly fell head-over-heels with co-star Tarita Teriipia, whom he would later marry. When Brando returned home, Moreno had had enough. Left alone in the morning, she scavenges through his medicine cabinet, found his sleeping pills and threw them back in one swallow. “I went to bed to die. This wasn’t a revenge suicide, but a consolation, an escape-from-pain death,” she writes. If Brando’s assistant had not checked in on her, she most certainly would have been dead. She was rushed to the hospital to have her stomach pumped. After this final ordeal, her therapist begged her and Brando never to see each other again. And they both agreed this time. The suicide attempt occurred shortly after filming wrapped on “ West Side Story” – a movie that would earn Moreno an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and change her life forever.
