Anna Kashfi

Anna Kashfi was born Joan O’Callaghan on September 30, 1934 in Darjeeling, India, to William and Phoebe. His father was an Irishman stationed in the British occupied India and moved his family to Kolkata (then Calcutta) for his job at the Indian railways. Anna’s mother was a Hindu devotee and living among Hindus had a major impact in shaping the beliefs of the family. Right from her childhood, she had been inspired from the Hindu way of life and adopted a pseudonym, Anna Kashfi when she grew up.

She did her early schooling from Kolkata and although most of the details about her life in India are just based on her personal records and statements, they are widely disputed. She had an Indian accent, wore Indian clothes, followed Hindu rituals of touching feet, and worshiped Hindu idols. Whether she converted officially or not, but it was apparent that she was heavily influenced by the Hindu culture.

India got freedom from the British rule in August 1947 and the O’Callaghan family had to move back to Europe and they got settled in Cardiff, where her father started working in a steel factory. Anna was an aspiring model and being of an unnaturally brown skin, she was considered an ‘exotic foreign beauty’. But before modelling, she did her schooling from St Joseph’s Convent School and later, Cardiff School of Art and did odd jobs after passing out.

She worked in a butcher shop, ice cream parlors and also worked as a waitress, before trying her hand at modelling. Her looks helped her in quickly becoming the favorite of many top modelling agencies in England and she modeled for a few years in London, until 1952, when she was spotted by a major Hollywood studio executive, who immediately invited her over to the USA to work in films and just like that, Anna headed to Hollywood.

Anna Kashfi got her screen name at the age of 22; it was given by the head of a famous London modelling agency. She liked it and adopted it and even got her name officially changed. However, she landed in America by her birth name only. She started working on her first Hollywood project, ‘The Mountain’ which was released in 1956, in which she played a Hindu girl. However, she became an instant figure of controversy when her film released as she copied Indian accent for her role while her features looked western.

Somehow, she managed to grab the eyeballs of many Hollywood producers, who wanted to cast her as this ‘foreign exotic beauty’, who left everyone mesmerized through her good looks. Some magazines went further saying that she bathed in coffee to achieve that brownish complexion, which contributed greatly to her attractiveness. Her next film was ‘Battle Hymn’ in 1959, where she played a Korean girl, a survivor of a plane crash.

Anna went on to play a Mexican character in her next film titled ‘Cowboy’ which came out the next year. The film ‘Night of the Quarter Moon’ marked the end of a very short film career. However, she did a couple of stints on the TV but the drug and alcohol problems she suffered from didn’t let her career blossom and above all her falling out with Marlon Brando, her first husband, who also happened to be one of the biggest Hollywood stars at that time, did not help her cause .

Anna Kashfi met Marlon Brando in 1956, while she was working on her very first feature film ‘The Mountain’ and immediately became Marlon’s subject of curiosity and they started dating right away. She married Brando in 1957 and however, her official documents identified her real name as Joanna O’Callaghan, she tried changing it to Anna Kashfi but failed. Being the wife of Brando immediately brought her into the limelight and the controversies surrounding her past started emerging.

She claimed that her father was Devi Kashfi, an Indian and her mother was Selma Ghose, and that she was an Indian by ethnicity. An Indian friend of her gave an interview on her wedding and said that her real father, Devi, died a few months ago and hence, he couldn’t be present at the wedding. Both her Irish parents came ahead and claimed that she was lying and that she was their biological daughter, faking her background to retain the mysterious quality that surrounded her.

However, with the release of her book ‘Brando for Breakfast’ in 1979, the whole speculation resurfaced again as she mentioned that William was in fact her step-father and that she was half-Indian. She was openly called a liar by her parents as her mother said that she was Irish and had no blood of any Indian in her. She loved India while she was there, and that’s why she lives in the delusion that she is an Indian.