Natalie Wood Biography

Natalie Wood was a rarity: a child star who grew up to become a respected and succesful dramatic actress. She had starring roles in ground-breaking films including Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story.

Natalie Wood became a movie star as a child when she played Susan Walker, the serious little girl who doubts Santa Claus in 1947’s Miracle on 34th Street. In her teens she remained a star thanks to movies such as Nicholas Ray‘s Rebel Without a Cause (1955, with James Dean) and The Searchers (1956, with John Wayne). On the big screen, Wood’s limpid brown eyes gave her the look of a troubled girl next door, mixing subtle intelligence with sex appeal.

In her adult roles, Natalie Wood was adept at comedy as well as serious drama; she was critically acclaimed in Splendor in the Grass (1961, with Warren Beatty), as Maria in West Side Story (1961) and in the title role of the strange drama Inside Daisy Clover (1965).

Natalie Wood drowned in 1981 off California’s Catalina Island while vacationing aboard a yacht with her husband Robert Wagner and actor Christopher Walken. The original coroner’s report called it an accidental death by drowning, but a 2012 supplement to the report changed that slightly to “drowning and other undetermined factors,” noting that bruising on her arms and neck suggested she might have been injured before landing in the water.

However, the same report said her death could not be definitively called “non-accidental.” The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said at the time that the case was still open, but has also said in the past that neither Walken or Wagner are suspects in Wood’s death.