Natalie Wood

Wood married actor Robert Wagner in 1957. She had a huge crush on Wagner since she was a child but finally got to express it when she was 18. The marriage ended in divorce in 1962.

In 1969, she married British producer Richard Gregson after they dated for two and a half years. The couple had a daughter together: Natasha Gregson. The couple got divorced in 1972.

Wood reconciled with her first husband, Robert Wagner, and remarried him in 1972 and two years later their daughter Courtney Wagner was born. They remained married until her death.

Natalie Wood was born in San Francisco to Russian immigrant parents--Nikolai Stepanovich Zakharenko and Maria Stepanovna. Her father was a day laborer and carpenter, and her mother was an aspiring actress.

Wood was encouraged to pursue performing arts from young age; she was enrolled into ballet class by her mother and at the age of 4 she got an opportunity to act in the movie titled ‘Happy Land’ in 1943.

In 1947, Wood signed up with 20th Century Fox studio for her first big role, the Christmas classic ‘Miracle on 34th Street’. The film was responsible in making her one of the top child artists of Hollywood.

Wood continued her education with acting as California law required that until the age of 18 actors were supposed to spend at least three hours per day to studies. A teacher was hired to teach her on the sets.

Wood’s first major ingenue role came at the age of 16 with ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ in 1955. She starred along with James Dean and was nominated for an Academy Award for her convincing acting as a mutinous teenager.

In the following year, she acted in ‘The Searchers’ along with John Wayne. Although she only played a small role but it was an important one. She also graduated from Van Nuys High School in the same year.

Her adult acting career, in spite of going through a rough patch because of various flops that she endured, took off with ‘Splendor in the Grass’ in 1961. She was casted in the movie by director Elia Kazan.

That same year, she starred in another distressed love story, ‘West Side Story’, a spin-off of Shakespeare’s Classic ‘Romeo and Juliet’. In the movie, Wood’s character falls in love with a boy from the poor area of the city.

Wood’s other movies from the ‘60s include: ‘Gypsy (1962)’, ‘Love with the Proper Stranger (1963)’, ‘The Great Race (1965)’, ‘Inside Daisy Clover (1965)’, ‘This Property Is Condemned (1966)’, ‘Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969)’, etc.

Wood started out as a child artist, and then starred in teenage movies, which eventually led to her establishment as a serious adult artist, and it was during the ‘60s that her acting career was at its glorious peak.

With movies like, ‘West Side Story (1961)’, ‘Gypsy (1962)’, ‘Splendor in the Grass (1961)’, ‘Love with the Proper Stranger (1963)’, etc., she established herself in the industry as a bold and versatile actress.