For four decades, the name Natalie Wood has almost always been associated with the same image: a November night, a yacht off the coast of Santa Catalina Island, and dark waters. It’s an unfair way to remember one of the most versatile actors that classic Hollywood ever produced.
Before the tragedy, Wood had an extraordinary career and made her own decisions about her life and work. According to her daughter, her mother “held the reins.”
Born in San Francisco in 1938 as Natalia Zakharenko, the daughter of Russian immigrants, she began working in front of a camera when she was just four years old. At nine, she won over America in You Can’t Live on Dreams Alone (1947).
She was one of the few child stars who made the transition to adult acting. At 16, she starred in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) alongside James Dean and earned her first Oscar nomination.
Two more nods would follow, for Splendor in the Grass (1961) and Love with a Stranger (1963). That’s three nominations in less than a decade, in an industry that rarely let actresses break free from the “pretty girl” role.
These are in addition to other films that have stayed part of cinema’s collective memory, such as West Side Story (1961) and Gypsy (1962).
Her personal life was intertwined with Robert Wagner ’s. They married in 1957, when she was 19, and divorced in 1962.
She later married British producer Richard Gregson, the father of her daughter Natasha, born in 1970. In 1972, Wood and Wagner remarried, and in 1974 their daughter Courtney was born.
It was one of Hollywood’s most celebrated second chances: a home always filled with friends, animals, and children, frequented by the likes of Fred Astaire, Bette Davis, Gene Kelly, and Audrey Hepburn . It’s also where Wagner raised Natasha, as if she were his own daughter.