Natalie Wood

Natalie Wood is a three time Oscar nominated actress, famous for her work in the classic films Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story. Growing up in the public eye, she shocked Hollywood with her high profile relationships; yet remained loved by the public who saw her as a romantic and tragic woman. This image was confirmed by her eventual drowning.

Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko was born on July 20, 1938, in San Francisco. Her father was an architect and her mother was a ballerina. When she was four years old, a production company was visiting her home area, and she got her first taste of fame with a role as a crying child in the Don Ameche film Happy Land. Excited by this experience, her mother, Maria, eagerly worked on developing her career (alongside that of her sister Lana, who went on to become a Playboy playmate and appeared opposite Sean Connery in Diamonds are Forever). In 1946, she starred alongside Orson Welles and Claudette Colbert in Tomorrow is Forever, and she also made notable appearances in Miracle on 34th Street, with Maureen O'Hara and John Payne; The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, with Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison; and The Star, with Bette Davis and Sterling Hayden. Referred to in Life magazine as "Hollywood's latest wonder child," she was even given a new screen name: Natalie Wood.

Wood's big break came at the age of sixteen when she secured a role alongside James Dean, Sal Mineo, and Dennis Hopper in the film which is said to have invented the teenager, Rebel Without a Cause. True to the spirit of the film, she chose this moment to rebel, beginning by having an affair with the film's director, Nicholas Ray, who was twenty five years her senior. Such scandalous behavior made certain that her private life would never be free from the public gaze. Before she reached her eighteenth birthday she had dated such stars as Raymond Burr, Scott Marlow, and Elvis Presley. She then married Robert Wagner, the star whom she had adored as a child. Sadly, the marriage was to end six years later when, according to Hollywood rumor, she found him in bed with another man.

Meanwhile, Wood's career as an adult actress took off spectacularly. She enjoyed roles in celebrated films such as John Ford's The Searchers, with John Wayne; The Burning Hills, with Tab Hunter; and West Side Story, with Richard Beymer and Russ Tamblyn. She got a taste of the theatrical in Sydney Pollack's adaptation of Tennessee Williams' This Property is Condemned. The swimming scenes proved difficult because of her fear of water, and off camera, Robert Redford had to swim underneath her, supporting her feet.

In 1962 Natalie took on the role of Gypsey Rose Lee in the movie of the same name and starred along side Karl Malden, as her long suffering beau, Herbie, and Rosalind Russell who played her mother.

Things took a turn for the worse in the mid 'sixties, when Wood almost died from an overdose of sleeping pills. She had an affair with Warren Beatty before marrying theater agent Richard Gregson and giving birth to a daughter, Natasha Gregson Wagner who would go on to become an actress herself. However, this brief glimpse of happiness was snatched away from her when she discovered Gregson was having an affair with his secretary, and she filed for divorce. In 1972 she remarried Robert Wagner and the two had another child, Courtney.