Christian Brando (who was named after French film director Christian Marquand) was born in Los Angeles, California on May 11, 1958, the product of an affair between Marlon Brando and Anna Kashfi, an actress. Marlon and Kashfi met in 1955, and Kashfi became pregnant in 1957. They married in 1958. Marlon later claimed that he had married Kashfi only because of the pregnancy and that he had other romantic relationships during the marriage. Kashfi was an abuser of barbiturates and alcohol.
The couple divorced a year after Christian's birth.
Christian was shuttled between his mother and father. His parents became increasingly hostile and abusive towards one another. The author Nellie Bly claimed that “When the Brandos quarreled, Anna displayed a ‘frightening’ rage,” and that “Anna left baby Christian alone in her car parked on Wilshire Boulevard while she confronted (Marlon) Brando in his office, ‘beating at him with her fists, in a frenzy of rage.”
Kashfi and Marlon engaged in a protracted custody battle. Marlon eventually won custody of Christian, who was then 13 years old, after Kashfi took their son out of school to travel to Mexico.
Marlon was a distant father and spent little time with young Christian, who was raised by nannies and servants. Christian moved between Hollywood and 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 that: “The family kept changing shape, I'd sit down at the breakfast table and say, "Who are you?"”.
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. He appeared in four other films and four made-for-TV productions, sometimes using the alias Gary Brown between 1980 and 1990
Christian pleg guilty to manslaughter in plea bargain for 10 years in prison begining 1990.
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