Natalie Wood (born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko; July 20, 1938-November 29, 1981) was an American actress who began her career in film as a child actor and successfully transitioned to young adult roles.
She was the recipient of four Golden Globes, and three Academy Award nominations.
Born in San Francisco to Russian immigrant parents, Wood began her acting career at age 4 and was given a co-starring role at age 8 in Miracle on 34th Street (1947). As a teenager, she earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), followed by a role in John Ford's The Searchers (1956).
Wood starred in the musical films West Side Story (1961) and Gypsy (1962), and she received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in Splendor in the Grass (1961) and Love with the Proper Stranger (1963). Her career continued with films such as Sex and the Single Girl (1964), Inside Daisy Clover (1964), and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969).
During the 1970s, Wood began a hiatus from film and had a child with husband Robert Wagner, whom she had previously married and divorced. Wagner and Wood remarried after she divorced her second husband.
She acted in only two feature films throughout the decade, but appeared slightly more often in television productions, including a remake of the film From Here to Eternity (1979) for which she received a Golden Globe Award. Wood's films represented a coming of age for her and for Hollywood films in general.
Critics have suggested that her cinematic career represents a portrait of modern American womanhood in transition, as she was one of the few to take both child roles and those of middle-aged characters.
More information: Indie Wire
Natalie Wood was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenkoin San Francisco, California, the daughter of Russian immigrant parents Nikolai Stepanovich Zakharenko and Maria Stepanovna Zakharenko. Natalia's father was born in Vladivostok into the poor family of Stepan Zakharenko, a chocolate-factory worker who joined the anti-Bolshevik civilian forces during the Russian Civil War. Her grandfather was killed in 1918 in a street fight in Vladivostok between Red and White Russian soldiers.
After that, his wife and her three sons fled to their relatives in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Later, they moved to San Francisco, where Nikolai worked as a day labourer and carpenter.
Natalia's mother, Maria, was born in Barnaul, southern Siberia. Maria's father, Stepan Zudilov, owned soap and candle factories, as well as an estate outside the city. With the start of the civil war, his family left Russia, resettling as refugees in the Chinese city of Harbin.
In 1925, Maria married Alexander Tatuloff in China and had a daughter, Olga (1928–2015), before divorcing in 1936. Natalia liked to describe her family as having been either gypsies or landowning aristocrats in Russia.
In her youth, her mother had dreamed of becoming an actress or ballet dancer. Natalia and her sisters were raised Russian Orthodox. As an adult, she stated, I'm very Russian, you know. She spoke both English and Russian with an American accent.
More information: Los Angeles Magazine
Wood appeared in 56 films for cinema and television. In one of her last interviews before her death, she was defined as our sexual conscience on the silver screen. Following her death, Time magazine noted that although critical praise for Wood had been sparse throughout her career, she always had work.
Wood died under mysterious circumstances at age 43 during the making of Brainstorm while on a weekend boat trip to Santa Catalina Island on board Wagner's yacht Splendour. Outside of drowning, many of the circumstances are unknown; it was never determined how she entered the water.
Wood was with her husband Robert Wagner, Brainstorm co-star Christopher Walken, and Splendour's captain Dennis Davern on the evening of November 28, 1981. Authorities recovered her body at 8 a.m. on November 29, 1.6 km away from the boat, with a small Valiant-brand inflatable dinghy beached nearby.
Wagner said that she was not with him when he went to bed. The autopsy report revealed that she had bruises on her body and arms, as well as an abrasion on her left cheek, but no indication as to how or when the injuries occurred.
In 2018, Wagner was named as a person of interest in the ongoing investigation into Wood's death.
More information: CBS News
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