Natalie Wood was an American actress who began her career in film as a child and successfully transitioned to young adult roles.
64 Facts About Natalie Wood
2.
Natalie Wood starred in the musical films West Side Story and Gypsy and received nominations for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in Splendor in the Grass and Love with the Proper Stranger.
3.
Natalie Wood acted in only two feature films throughout the decade, but she appeared slightly more often in television productions, including a remake of From Here to Eternity for which she won a Golden Globe Award.
4.
Natalie Wood's films represented a "coming of age" for her and for Hollywood films in general.
5.
On November 29,1981, at the age of 43, Natalie Wood drowned in the Pacific Ocean near Santa Catalina Island during a break from production of her would-be comeback film Brainstorm.
6.
Natalie Wood was with her husband Wagner and Brainstorm co-star Christopher Walken.
7.
Natalie Wood's mother was previously married to Armenian mechanic Alexander Tatuloff from 1925 to 1936.
8.
Natalie Wood's parents met while her mother was still married to Tatuloff.
9.
In 1942, they bought a home in Santa Rosa, where Natalie Wood was noticed by members of a crew during a film shoot downtown.
10.
Natalie Wood's only full sibling, sister Svetlana, was born in Santa Monica in 1946 and later became an actress under the name Lana Wood.
11.
Natalie Wood remained in contact with Wood's family for two years, advising them when another role came up.
12.
Natalie Wood's mother became so excited that she "packed the whole family off to Los Angeles to live," writes Harris.
13.
Natalie Wood played a post-World War II German orphan, opposite Orson Welles as Wood's guardian and Claudette Colbert, in Tomorrow Is Forever.
14.
When Natalie Wood was unable to cry on cue, her mother tore a butterfly to pieces in front of her to ensure she would sob for a scene.
15.
Natalie Wood acted in another film directed by Pichel, The Bride Wore Boots, and went on to 20th Century Fox to play Gene Tierney's daughter in The Ghost and Mrs Muir.
16.
Natalie Wood plays a cynical girl who comes to believe a kindly department store holiday season employee portrayed by Edmund Gwenn is the real Santa Claus.
17.
The film has become a Christmas classic; Natalie Wood was counted among the top child stars in Hollywood after the film and was so popular that Macy's invited her to appear in the store's annual Thanksgiving Day parade.
18.
Natalie Wood appeared on television in episodes of Kraft Theatre and Chevron Theatre,.
19.
Natalie Wood's mother continued to play a significant role in her daughter's early career, coaching her and micromanaging aspects of her career even after Natalie Wood acquired agents.
20.
Natalie Wood described the GE Theater episode, "Carnival", as one of the best things she ever did.
21.
Natalie Wood had roles in the feature films The Silver Chalice and One Desire.
22.
Natalie Wood successfully made the transition from child star to ingenue at age 16 when she co-starred with James Dean and Sal Mineo in Rebel Without a Cause, Nicholas Ray's film about teenage rebellion.
23.
Natalie Wood had to sign to a long-term contract with Warner Bros.
24.
Natalie Wood later said it was the first script she read that she actually wanted to do as opposed to being told to do by her parents; she said her parents were opposed to her doing it.
25.
Natalie Wood continued to guest star on anthology TV shows like Studio One in Hollywood, Camera Three, Kings Row, Studio 57, Warner Brothers Presents, and The Kaiser Aluminum Hour.
26.
Natalie Wood had a small but crucial role in John Ford's The Searchers and was the female lead in A Cry in the Night.
27.
Natalie Wood signed with Warner Brothers and was kept busy during the remainder of the decade in many "girlfriend" roles, which she found unsatisfying.
28.
Natalie Wood was leading lady to Frank Sinatra in Kings Go Forth then refused roles and was put on suspension by Warners.
29.
Natalie Wood returned to be leading lady to James Garner in Cash McCall.
30.
Natalie Wood's career was in a transition period, having until then consisted of roles as a child or as a teenager.
31.
Natalie Wood was then cast in Kazan's Splendor in the Grass with Warren Beatty.
32.
Natalie Wood felt that despite her earlier innocent roles, she had the talent and maturity to go beyond them.
33.
The experience was exhilarating, but wrenching for Natalie Wood, who faced her demons on Splendor.
34.
Natalie Wood played Maria, a restless Puerto Rican girl on the West Side of Manhattan, in West Side Story, Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise's 1961 film of the stage musical, which was a critical and box-office success.
35.
Natalie Wood was to represent the "restlessness of American youth in the 1950s", expressed by youth gangs and juvenile delinquency, along with early rock and roll.
36.
Natalie Wood sang when she starred in the film Gypsy alongside Rosalind Russell.
37.
At the age of 25, Natalie Wood received her third Academy Award nomination for Love with the Proper Stranger, making Natalie Wood the youngest person to score three Oscar nominations.
38.
In 1966, Natalie Wood was given the Harvard Lampoon award for being the "Worst Actress of Last Year, This Year, and Next".
39.
Natalie Wood was the first person to attend and accept the award in person.
40.
Natalie Wood was announced for I Never Promised You a Rose Garden but did not appear in it.
41.
Natalie Wood made a brief cameo appearance as herself in The Candidate, working once more with Robert Redford.
42.
Natalie Wood reunited on the screen with Robert Wagner in the television film of the week The Affair, and with Laurence Olivier and Wagner in an adaptation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for the British series Laurence Olivier Presents broadcast as a special by NBC.
43.
Natalie Wood made cameo appearances on Wagner's prime-time detective series Switch in 1978 as Bubble Bath Girl, and Hart to Hart in 1979 as Movie Star.
44.
Natalie Wood starred in The Memory of Eva Ryker, released in May 1980, which proved to be her last completed production.
45.
At the time of her death, Natalie Wood was filming the $15 million science fiction film Brainstorm, co-starring Christopher Walken and directed by Douglas Trumbull.
46.
Natalie Wood was scheduled to make her stage debut on February 12,1982, in Anastasia at Ahmanson Theatre with Wendy Hiller.
47.
Natalie Wood had purchased film rights to the Barbara Wersba book, Country of the Heart, and was planning to star with Timothy Hutton in the drama about the professional-romantic relationship between a tough-minded poet and her much younger student.
48.
The ending of Brainstorm had to be re-written and Natalie Wood's character written out of at least three scenes, while a stand-in and sound-alikes were used to replace Natalie Wood for some of her crucial shots.
49.
Natalie Wood had a broken engagement in 1965 with Venezuelan shoe manufacturer Ladislav Blatnik.
50.
On May 30,1969, Natalie Wood married British producer Richard Gregson after dating for nearly three years.
51.
Natalie Wood filed for divorce from Gregson on August 4,1971, and it was finalized on April 12,1972.
52.
In 2013, former FBI agent Donald G Wilson claimed that he and Wood had had a four-year affair, from 1973 to 1977, that began when she was pregnant with Courtney Wagner.
53.
Natalie Wood "hated" her former screen idol afterward, "shuddering" if she heard his name.
54.
Natalie Wood would keep the horrible secret, and behave as if nothing happened whenever their paths intersected, too schooled by Mud [her mother] in the politics of Hollywood to cross a powerful movie star.
55.
In 2021, a year after the death of Kirk Douglas, Lana published the memoir Little Sister: My Investigation Into the Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood and identified Douglas as Wood's alleged assailant.
56.
On November 29,1981, Natalie Wood died under mysterious circumstances at age 43 during the making of Brainstorm.
57.
Natalie Wood had been on a weekend boat trip to Santa Catalina Island on board her husband Robert Wagner's 58-foot motoryacht Splendour.
58.
Natalie Wood was buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.
59.
Natalie Wood alleged that Wood had been flirting with Walken, that Wagner was jealous and enraged, and that Wagner had prevented Davern from turning on the search lights and notifying authorities after Wood's disappearance.
60.
The amended document included a statement that it is "not clearly established" how Natalie Wood ended up in the water.
61.
The addendum stated that Natalie Wood might have sustained some of the bruises on her body before she went into the water, but that this could not be definitively determined.
62.
Forensic pathologist Michael Hunter speculated that Natalie Wood was particularly susceptible to bruising because she had taken the drug Synthroid.
63.
In 2020, a medical doctor and former intern of Noguchi at the time of Natalie Wood's death stated that the bruises were substantial and fitting for someone being thrown out of a boat.
64.
Natalie Wood claimed that he made those observations to Noguchi.