Rita Hayworth's Children: All About Her Daughters Yasmin and Rebecca

Rita Hayworth's daughter Yasmin was the actress’ caretaker in her final years

Golden Age actress Rita Hayworth was married five times, but it was her two children, daughters Rebecca Welles and Yasmin Aga Khan, for whom her love endured.

“She was just a wonderful mother,” Yasmin told Fox News in 2018. “So loving, so caring ... I just remember her as a loving, loving mother.”

Recalling days spent on the golf course with Hayworth, she added: “I had a wonderful childhood.”

Rita first became a mom in December 1944 with the birth of her daughter Rebecca, whom she shared with actor and director Orson Welles. Five years later, having split from Welles and married her third husband, Prince Aly Salomone Khan, she welcomed Princess Yasmin Aga Khan.

Yasmin served as her mother’s caretaker for the last six years of her life and was vocal about the bond she shared with the movie star, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1981.

“We had a close mother-daughter relationship filled with mutual respect and love,” she wrote in a cover story for PEOPLE following Hayworth’s May 1987 death. “My sense of responsibility and duty to my mother was strong."

Here is everything to know about Rita Hayworth’s children, Rebecca and Yasmin.

Rebecca Welles

Hayworth’s first child, Rebecca Welles, was born in Santa Monica, Calif., on Dec. 17, 1944, one year after she married Orson Welles. The actor also shared Christopher Welles with his ex-wife Virginia Nicholson and later welcomed daughter Beatrice Welles with Paola Mori.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the couple separated when Rebecca was less than 2 years old and Hayworth moved into a new home with her daughter in March 1946. The actress filed for divorce in November 1947.

During Rebecca’s childhood, she was photographed with Hayworth in many different locales, including Gstaad, Switzerland, London, New York City and Paris. As a teenager, Rebecca followed in her parents’ footsteps, taking up acting at the Pasadena Playhouse.

While there, she embarked upon a whirlwind romance with fellow actor Michael Flores and got engaged within three weeks of meeting him. The couple called things off that same year at Hayworth’s urging, however. “I asked them to think it over and consider whether they were really ready for the responsibility,” the You Were Never Lovelier star told the Valley Morning Star in 1965. “They did and decided to call it off.”

Rebecca stayed committed to her theater studies, focusing on the craft as well as advanced French, geology and English literature at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash.

In 1966, she gave birth to a child named Marc McKerrow, whom she placed for adoption. Rebecca didn't reconnect with her son before she died, though his story was later told in a 2008 documentary called Prodigal Sons, which chronicled McKerrow’s journey to trace his roots.

Rebecca later found love with sculptor Perry Moade, and TIME reported that the two were married in a private ceremony in Tacoma on March 23, 1970.

Though the theater student appeared in a 1970 ad with her father for Jim Beam, she grew distant from her parents, reportedly telling Roto in 1972, per The Telegraph, “Sometimes I am [really] bitter about ... what being a child of celebrities has done to me.” She added, “Mother and Father have never been to my home in Tacoma. Not even when my husband Perry Moede and I were married. As far as they are concerned, I’m on my own.”

Orson died of an apparent heart attack in 1985 and two years later, Rebecca also lost her mother to Alzheimer’s disease. She was photographed placing flowers on her mother’s casket alongside sister Yasmin at her May 18 funeral.

When Rebecca died in 2004 at her home in Tacoma at the age of 60, she was married to Guy Manning, a man she met shortly after her graduation from the University of Puget Sound. According to her obituary, she was also a stepmom to his three children, Kristine Manning Scholtz and Michael and Brandi Manning. Marc was also named in her obituary.

Per his own obituary, Rebecca’s son died of complications from a nocturnal seizure on June 18, 2010.

Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, 74

Hayworth gave birth to her second daughter, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, with her then-husband Prince Aly on Dec. 18, 1949. Aly was also the father of Prince Karim Aga Khan IV and Prince Amyn Muhammad, whom he shared with Joan Yarde-Buller.

Though Hayworth and Aly's marriage ended in divorce in 1953, they maintained an amicable relationship after their split, according to Yasmin, who spent summers with her father in the South of France. “My earliest memories of my mother and father together were when I was 8 or 9,” she wrote for PEOPLE in June 1987, adding, “Theirs was a truly good relationship.”

She also shared fond memories of time spent alone with her mother in Beverly Hills, Calif. “I remember ... spending a lot of time with her just sitting by the pool at our home and talking,” she wrote in 1987. “We would swim, laugh and giggle, and talk just like two close friends. We really enjoyed being with each other, sharing experiences and love.”

While Hayworth would occasionally bring her younger daughter along on set, she kept a close eye on her at home. “She was quite strict,” Yasmin wrote. “She allowed me to watch television only on weekends when there was no school. In my early teens, I wasn’t allowed to go out on dates, but could have my boyfriends and girlfriends over to the house. I wasn’t allowed to go on a date alone until I was 16.”

When Yasmin was just 10 years old, her father was killed in a car accident. “His death was a deep emotional shock to Mother,” Yasmin recalled. “Probably it was at that time that the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease began.”

She described her experience dealing with her mother’s illness as a boarding school student, telling Classic Chicago in April 2023, “My mom started exhibiting ‘odd’ behavior. She would ask me the same questions and seemed very confused. I was concerned, but had no idea what to do.”

Yasmin studied classical singing from a young age and attended both the Buxton School in Williamstown, Mass., and Bennington College, but abandoned her plans of becoming a musician in order to care for Hayworth. “When I went to university, I was a music major,” she told Globe and Mail in 2019. “I was going to go to Europe to study, and that’s when my mother’s disease heightened, and it was really necessary that I step in. I said, ‘Okay, this is more important than my career in music.' And that was the right decision. I don’t have any regrets.”

In June 1981, Yasmin was appointed as her mother’s conservator after Hayworth was declared legally unable to care for herself by a Los Angeles court, per The New York Times. She relocated the actress to New York to live near her.

Hayworth’s youngest daughter also became heavily involved in philanthropy. “My fight to end Alzheimer’s began in 1981 when my mother ... was diagnosed with the disease,” she told Classic Chicago. “I made the decision to share her story in the hopes of helping others. I knew this would become my life’s work.”

In 1984, the princess launched the Rita Hayworth Gala, which has raised more than $86 million to “advance the mission of the Alzheimer’s Association,” in her mother’s honor. Yasmin celebrated her annual Rita Hayworth Gala in Chicago in September 2024.

She also became a member of several Alzheimer’s organizations, including Alzheimer’s Disease International, of which she became the president, and the Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Association of America, of which she served as the vice president.

When Yasmin married Basil Embiricos on May 15, 1985, the couple took Hayworth into account. “The decision to proceed with a civil function now ... was taken in view of the failing health of Princess Yasmin's mother, Rita Hayworth,” a statement read per The New York Times.

Later that year, Yasmin gave birth to a son, Andrew Ali Aga Khan Embiricos. “I would bring him in and talk to [my mom, who] ... was right next door,” Yasmin shared with Fox News in 2018. “I wasn’t sure if she knew or not, but I thought it was important to be there.”

Hayworth died at the age of 68 on May 14, 1987. Two years later, The New York Times reported that Yasmin, who divorced Basil in 1987, had tied the knot with real estate developer Christopher Michael Jeffries in a private ceremony at her home. Their romance didn’t last however, and the pair divorced in 1993.

The princess suffered another heartbreaking loss on Dec. 4, 2011, when Andrew, who was also involved with research efforts for the Alzheimer’s Association, was found dead in his New York City apartment at the age of 25. “Princess Yasmin Aga Khan and her former husband are deeply saddened by the death of their son Andrew Embiricos,” a spokesperson for the Aga Khan Foundation told PEOPLE at the time.

In 2019, Princess Yasmin was honored with an Alzheimer’s Association Lifetime Achievement Award, per Deseret News. In 2022, she became a Knight of the Legion of Honor, an award considered to be France’s highest order of merit.

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