Actor Marlon Brando’s daughter Cheyenne – the troubled, onetime model whose half-brother killed her lover in the movie star’s sprawling Hollywood Hills home – has committed suicide in Tahiti, officials said on Monday.
Cheyenne Brando, 25, who had been in seclusion for months, hanged herself on Sunday at her home on the South Pacific island, authorities said. Friends said she had suffered depression since her half-brother, Christian, fatally shot Dag Drollet in a 1990 case that made news around the world.
Marlon Brando had no comment on Monday and planned to issue no statement, said his agent, Ed Limato. Limato declined to disclose the actor’s whereabouts.
Her death was the second suicide of a child of a celebrity in recent weeks. Actor Carroll O’Connor’s son Hugh, depressed over a 16-year drug addiction, shot himself to death on March 28.
Cheyenne Brando was the daughter of Tarita Teriipia, a Tahitian actress who played the sweetheart of Fletcher Christian, portrayed by Brando in the 1962 movie Mutiny on the Bounty. Christian Brando is the son of the actor and his first wife, actress Anna Kashfi.
Cheyenne Brando and Drollet, son of a prominent Tahitian politician, had been living together in Tahiti for more than a year before they separated in March 1990, sources in Tahiti said.
The sources said the separation took place a few months after Cheyenne Brando – a model known for her exotic beauty – was disfigured in a car crash.
Despite the separation, Drollet and Cheyenne Brando flew to Los Angeles together about May 1, 1990. She went to Southern California for counseling after the car crash, and both moved into the Brando home on Mulholland Drive.
Police said that on the night of May 16, 1990, Drollet, 26, and Christian Brando, then 32, got into an argument.
Christian Brando said he shot Drollet accidentally during a struggle after accusing Drollet of “slapping around” his half-sister, who was seven months pregnant with Drollet’s child. Prosecutors charged Christian Brando with murdering Drollet, saying there was no evidence of a struggle.
Marlon Brando, his wife and Cheyenne Brando were in the home when Drollet was shot, police said. The reclusive actor tried to revive Drollet with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and called 911 to summon police.
A month after the shooting, after attempts were made to serve her with papers naming her a material witness, Cheyenne Brando flew to Tahiti. Prosecutors said she was trying to avoid testifying in the case. A few days after that, she gave birth to Drollet’s child, and within days, she entered a psychiatric hospital for treatment.
Tuki, her son, is now 4 years old.
In the months that followed, prosecutors launched an international battle to have the young woman returned to Los Angeles to testify at her half-brother’s trial.
While the battle raged, Cheyenne Brando overdosed on tranquilizers and depressant drugs and lapsed into a coma at a hospital in Tahiti. She recovered briefly, then tried to hang herself, her father said.
On Dec. 22, 1990, a judge declared her “mentally disabled,” ending the five-month struggle to compel her to testify.
With their star witness in Tahiti and their case a shambles, the prosecutors struck a deal arranged by Christian Brando’s attorney, Robert Shapiro, now one of O.J. Simpson’s attorneys.
Christian Brando pleaded guilty to the manslaughter count and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Cheyenne Brando’s death came as her father was enjoying resurgent success on the screen, appearing as a psychiatrist in the romantic comedy, Don Juan DeMarco.
His earlier acting triumphs are legendary, including an acclaimed performance on Broadway and the screen in Streetcar Named Desire and Academy Award-winning roles in the films On the Waterfront and The Godfather.
