Anjelica Huston: My Boyfriend Drove Me To Suicide Bid
Nov. 19 2013, Published 8:13 p.m. ET
Anjelica Huston tried to kill herself in "desperation" over her boyfriend's mood swings.
The 62-year-old actress met photographer Bob Richardson in 1969, when she was 18 and he was 42, and they had a tumultuous romance, made more difficult by the fact he was suffering from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
In her autobiography, A Story Lately Told: Coming of Age in Ireland, London and New York, Huston writes: "I never felt so fragile or vulnerable as when Bob became demonic and flew into a rage, or worse, when afterward he retreated into his shell.
"One morning, four days into one of these ordeals, I walked into the bathroom at the Chelsea Hotel and, in desperation, drew a razor blade across my left wrist. I ran back into the bedroom, blood spurting from the vein, crying to him, 'Will this make you love me?"
In her book, Huston also tells of how she caught the eye of actor Marlon Brando when she was just 16 and the then-53-year-old screen legend had been invited by her father, director John Huston, to their family estate in Ireland.
She wrote: "I went up to the Big House one morning and found a tanned, even-featured man in a maroon velour sweatshirt standing on the upstairs landing, talking to Dad, who introduced me to him.
"Marlon smiled and his lips curled. He spoke through his nose.
"That afternoon in the study, Marlon gave me a tortoise shell ring from Tahiti, inlaid with silver and asked me if I'd like to visit him there someday."