Natalie Wood

Natalie Wood was born Natalie Zacharenko on July 20, 1938, in San Francisco, to Russian immigrant parents. Her mother, Maria Zoudilova, had fled Russia during the Civil War and settled in China before moving to America, where she divorced her first husband and married Wood’s father, Nicholas Zacharenko, a carpenter. The family changed their surname to Gurdin when Wood was a year old, and later, RKO executives gave her the stage name “Wood” as a tribute to filmmaker Sam Wood. She had one full sister, Svetlana (known as actress Lana Wood).

Wood started acting at age four, appearing in *The Moon Is Down* (1943) and *Happy Land* (1943). Director Irving Pichel noticed her and stayed in touch, eventually calling her mother to bring Wood to Los Angeles for a screen test. Her mother, driven by ambition, moved the family there despite her father’s objections. At seven, Wood played a German orphan in *Tomorrow Is Forever* (1946) opposite Orson Welles, who called her a “born professional.” She then appeared in *The Bride Wore Boots* and *The Ghost and Mrs. Muir* (1947). Her breakout child role came at age eight in *Miracle on 34th Street* (1947), where she played a skeptical girl who learns to believe in Santa Claus. The film became a Christmas classic, and Wood was considered one of Hollywood’s top child stars.

As a teenager, Wood earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for *Rebel Without a Cause* (1955) and starred in John Ford’s *The Searchers* (1956). She later took leading roles in musicals *West Side Story* (1961) and *Gypsy* (1962), and received Best Actress Oscar nominations for *Splendor in the Grass* (1961) and *Love with the Proper Stranger* (1963). Her filmography through the 1960s included *Sex and the Single Girl* (1964), *The Great Race* (1965), *Inside Daisy Clover* (1965), *This Property Is Condemned*, *Penelope* (1966), and *Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice* (1969).

In the 1970s, Wood took a break from film, having two daughters—one with first husband Robert Wagner and one with second husband Richard Gregson. She appeared in only two feature films that decade but worked more in television, winning a Golden Globe for a remake of *From Here to Eternity* (1979). Critics have noted that her career, spanning child roles to middle-aged characters, represents a portrait of modern American womanhood in transition.

On November 29, 1981, at age 43, Wood drowned in the Pacific Ocean near Santa Catalina Island while on a break from filming *Brainstorm* (1983). She was with her husband Wagner and co-star Christopher Walken. Conflicting witness statements led the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, following the coroner’s instructions, to list her cause of death as “drowning and other undetermined factors” in 2012. In 2018, Wagner was named a person of interest in the ongoing investigation.