Maria "Movita" Castaneda (born 4 December 1917) is an American actress best known for being the second wife of actor Marlon Brando. In films, she played exotic women/singers, such as in Flying Down to Rio (1933) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) with Clark Gable. She is the mother of 2: Miko Castaneda Brando (b. 1961) and Rebecca Brando Kotlizky (b. 1966).
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Life and work

Movita, a Mexican American, was born in Nogales, Arizona, on a train travelling between Mexico and Arizona. Movita began her acting career singing the Carioca to Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire's first dance number in the first film in which the famous duo appeared together, Flying Down to Rio (1933). She continued playing exotic women in American and Spanish language films in the 1930s, most notably as a Tahitian girl, Tehanni in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) alongside Clark Gable and Franchot Tone, then starring in two films alongside John Carroll, Rose of the Rio Grande (1938) and Wolf Call (1939), and in The Girl from Rio (1939) with Warren Hull. She starred in the British thriller Tower of Terror (1941) alongside Wilfrid Lawson and Michael Rennie. After a break, she appeared as Henry Fonda's cook in Fort Apache (1948), then starred with Tim Holt in two further westerns: The Mysterious Desperado (1949), and Saddle Legion (1951).

In the early 1940s, Movita married the Irish boxer, singer and actor Jack Doyle (known as the Gorgeous Gael). Doyle was noted for disappearing on drinking bouts and lost several important fights while drunk. The marriage did not last long.