Natalie Wood (née Zacharenko; July 20, 1938 – November 29, 1981) was an American actress who began her career in film as a child and successfully transitioned to young adult roles.

Wood starred in the musical films West Side Story (1961) and Gypsy (1962) and received nominations for an 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), The Great Race (1965), Inside Daisy Clover (1965), and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969).

She acted in only two feature films throughout the decade, but she appeared slightly more often in television productions, including a remake of From Here to Eternity (1979) for which she won a Golden Globe Award.

[3] 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.

[4][5] On November 29, 1981, at the age of 43, Wood drowned in the Pacific Ocean at Santa Catalina Island during a break from production of her would-be comeback film Brainstorm (1983).

[23] Her paternal grandfather, a chocolate factory employee who joined the anti-Bolshevik civilian forces during the war, was killed in a street fight between the Red Army and White Russian soldiers in Vladivostok.

She played a post-World War II German orphan, opposite Orson Welles as Wood's guardian and Claudette Colbert, in Tomorrow Is Forever (1946).

"[34] Wood acted in another film directed by Pichel, The Bride Wore Boots, and went on to 20th Century Fox to play Gene Tierney's daughter in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947).

She plays a cynical girl who comes to believe a kindly department store holiday-season employee portrayed by Edmund Gwenn is the real Santa Claus.

Wood successfully made the transition from child star to ingénue at age 16 when she co-starred with James Dean and Sal Mineo in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Nicholas Ray's film about teenage rebellion.

[41] The studio cast her in two films opposite Tab Hunter, hoping to turn the duo into a box-office draw that never materialized: The Burning Hills (1956), a Western, and The Girl He Left Behind (1956).

As Marjorie Morningstar, Wood played the role of a young Jewish girl in New York City who has to deal with the social and religious expectations of her family as she tries to forge her own path and separate identity.

[3] Biographer Suzanne Finstad wrote that a "turning point" in Wood's life as an actress took place when she saw the film A Streetcar Named Desire (1951): "She was transformed, in awe of director Elia Kazan and of Vivien Leigh's performance… [who] became a role model for Natalie.

"[3] Finstad felt that although Wood had never trained in method acting techniques, "working with Kazan brought her to the greatest emotional heights of her career.

Wood made two comedies with Tony Curtis: Sex and the Single Girl (1964) and The Great Race (1965), the latter with Jack Lemmon, and Peter Falk.

After a three-year break from movies, Wood co-starred with Dyan Cannon, Robert Culp and Elliott Gould in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), a comedy about sexual liberation.

After another lengthy break, she appeared in the ensemble disaster film Meteor (1979) with Sean Connery and the sex comedy The Last Married Couple in America (1980) with George Segal and Valerie Harper.

In Last Married Couple, Wood broke ground: although an actress with a clean, middle-class image, she used the word fuck in a frank marital discussion with her husband (Segal).

In this period, Wood had more success in television, receiving high ratings and critical acclaim in 1979 for The Cracker Factory and especially the miniseries remake of From Here to Eternity (1979), with Kim Basinger and William Devane.

[66] Wood had also purchased film rights to the Barbara Wersba book, Country of the Heart, and was planning to star with Timothy Hutton in the drama about the professional-romantic relationship between a tough-minded poet and her much younger student.

[75] Wood's subsequent boyfriends included Warren Beatty, Michael Caine, and David Niven Jr. She also had a broken engagement in 1965 with Venezuelan shoe manufacturer Ladislav Blatnik.

[76] In 2015, after a third-party source had repeatedly published the claim,[79][80] former FBI agent Donald G. Wilson openly stated that he and Wood had had a four-year affair, from 1973 to 1977, that began when she was pregnant with Courtney Wagner.

[83][84] Through the recollection of Wood's close friends, which included actors Scott Marlowe and Dennis Hopper, Finstad said: Though her five close friends' memories of some details or timing differ after forty-five years, the essence of what each recalls Natalie confiding to them is the same: that the same married film star lured or tricked Natalie, raped her so brutally she was physically injured, and she was too frightened or intimidated to report it to the police.

She would keep the horrible secret, and behave as if nothing happened whenever their paths intersected, too schooled by Mud [her mother] in the politics of Hollywood to cross a powerful movie star.

[note 3] Authorities recovered her body at 8 a.m. on November 29, one mile (1.6 km) away from the boat, with a small Valiant-brand inflatable dinghy beached nearby.

[90][93] Her sister Lana expressed doubts, alleging that Wood could not swim and had been "terrified" of water all her life, and that she would never have left the yacht on her own by dinghy.

Among the celebrities were Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Fred Astaire, Rock Hudson, David Niven, Gregory Peck, Gene Kelly, Elia Kazan, and Laurence Olivier.

[97] The case was reopened in November 2011 after Davern publicly stated that he had lied to police during the initial investigation and that Wood and Wagner had an argument that evening.

[115] Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), a successful film that Wood made after a period of professional and personal setbacks, cemented her place as an actress who was part of both worlds.