Girl who got the Stones rolling...
with Mick’s girlfriend Marianne. Anita also played a nurse in Candy, with Marlon Brando. In his autobiography, Life, Keith said Brando “kidnapped her one night and read her poetry and, when that failed, tried to seduce Anita and me together”. But they still named their first child, Marlon, in 1969,
Three years later they had a daughter, Dandelion Angela and in 1976 a son, Tara Jo Jo, who died of pneumonia at 10 weeks.
Keith’s mother then insisted on raising Angela at her home in Kent, while Anita and Keith raised Marlon on the road.
Anita had always kept pace with Keith’s booze and drug hell-raising. But when they started using heroin she out-Keithed him. He wrote: “I tried to clean up loads of times, but not Anita.”
In 1977, Keith was arrested in Toronto in possession of heroin. They both went into rehab. It worked for him, but not her.
In 2008, Anita claimed she and Keith were driven apart by lawyers who saw her as a bad influence. In 1978, she was set up in a house in New York, so Marlon could start school. She went to pieces. Her weight ballooned to 13st as her looks were ravaged by drink and drugs. In 1979, she was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter after Scott Cantrell, 17, shot himself in the head in her bed with Keith’s gun. Cantrell, their groundsman, was said to be having a sexual relationship with Anita. The death was later ruled a suicide, despite rumours that he and Anita were playing Russian Roulette. She said later: “I didn’t feel anything. That’s one of the wonders of drugs and drink.” But Marlon had been in the house at the time, and it proved the end of Anita and Keith’s relationship. Anita moved back to London where, in 1987, she finally went into rehab. She turned her life around, and completed a fashion and textile degree in the 1990s.
Critics said her graduate show was “a triumph of style over substance abuse”, but Anita decided against a career as a designer. She said: “I don’t like the fashion world. It’s too nasty, too rip-off, too hard.”
She returned to acting, making six more movies. In 2001, she appeared in Absolutely Fabulous, playing the devil alongside Marianne Faithfull as God.
Anita’s later years were spent tending her allotment in Chelsea and doting on her two grandchildren, aged 20 and 16.
Asked once by Courtney Love if she would ever have plastic surgery, Anita said: “Darling, I was the most beautiful woman in 17 countries. I like being ugly!”
Last year, Anita said: “I am ready to die. Now I am over 70 and, to be honest, I did not think I would live over 40.”