Natalie Wood
born: 20-07-1938
birth place: San Francisco, USA
died: 29-11-1981
American actress Natalie Wood was born with the birth name of Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko, of Russian émigré stock. Her parents hardly spoke any comprehensible English, and changed their family name to Gurdin upon becoming US Citizens.
Wood made her first film appearance, aged four, as an extra in ‘Happy Land’ in 1943. She was picked after a production company had come to Santa Rosa, and spotted her for the role of ‘crying baby’.
She took dancing lessons as soon as she could walk, and, by 1947, in supporting roles in films such as ‘Miracle on 34th St’, she earned up to $1000 per week. A prolific child star, she appeared in no less than 18 films in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Aged 17, she landed her breakthrough adult role, as James Dean’s girlfriend, in 'Rebel Without a Cause' , which resulted in her first Oscar Nomination.
Her next major roles were opposite Warren Beatty in ‘Splendor in the Grass’ and in the musical ‘West Side Story’, both in 1961. Receiving another Oscar nomination for the former, she followed up with her sterling performance in ‘Love With A Proper Stranger’.
Having married film star Robert Wagner in 1957, they separated in 1962.
Films such as ‘Gypsy’ (1963), ‘Inside Daisy Clover’(1967) and ‘Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice’(1969) continued her prominence.
Bizarrely, she remarried Wagner again in 1971, and spent the next decade mainly in TV, with the series ‘From Here To Eternity’.
Whilst filming a sci-fi film, ‘Brainstorm’ with Christopher Walken in 1981, she drowned in a yachting accident, aged 43. ‘Brainstorm’ was eventually released in 1983.
