larblog: Natalie Wood Biography

Natalie Wood, born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko (Russian: Наталья Николаевна Захаренко; July 20, 1938 – November 29, 1981) was an American actress.

Wood began acting in movies at the age of four and became a successful child actress in such films as Miracle on 34th Street (1947). A well received performance opposite James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and helped her to make the transition from a child performer. She then starred in the musicals West Side Story (1961) and Gypsy (1962). She also received Academy Award for Best Actress nominations for her performances in Splendor in the Grass (1961) and Love with the Proper Stranger (1963).

Her career continued successfully with films such as Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969). After this she took a break from acting and had two children, appearing in only two theatrical films during the 1970s. She was married to actor Robert Wagner twice, and to producer Richard Gregson. She had one daughter by each: Natasha Gregson and Courtney Wagner. Her younger sister, Lana Wood, is also an actress. Wood starred in several television productions, including a remake of the film From Here to Eternity (1979) for which she won a Golden Globe Award. During her career, from child actress to adult star, her films represented a "coming of age" for both her and Hollywood films in general.

Wood drowned near Santa Catalina Island, California, at age 43, during production of Brainstorm (1983) co-starring Christopher Walken. Her death has been declared an accident. However, on November 17, 2011, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department reopened the case based on new witness statements.

Wood was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko in San Francisco to Russian immigrant parents Maria Stepanovna (née Zudilova; 1912–1998) and Nikolai Stepanovich Zakharenko. As an adult, she stated, "I'm very Russian, you know."[ She spoke both Russian and English. Her father was born in Vladivostok and he, his mother, and two brothers, immigrated to Montreal, Quebec, and later to San Francisco. There, he worked as a day laborer and carpenter. Her paternal grandfather Stepan worked in a chocolate factory in Russia and was killed in street fighting between Red and White Russian soldiers in 1918. Natalie's mother originally came from Barnaul, southern Siberia, but grew up in the Chinese city of Harbin. She described her family by weaving mysterious tales of being either gypsies or landowning aristocrats. In her youth, her mother dreamed of becoming an actress or ballet dancer.

Biographer Warren Harris writes that under the family's "needy circumstances," her mother may have transferred those ambitions to her middle daughter, Natalie. Her mother would take Natalie to the movies as often as she could: "Natalie's only professional training was watching Hollywood child stars from her mother's lap," notes Harris. Wood would later recall this time period:

My mother used to tell me that the cameraman who pointed his lens out at the audience at the end of the Paramount newsreel was taking my picture. I'd pose and smile like he was going to make me famous or something. I believed everything my mother told me.

Shortly after Wood's birth in San Francisco, her family moved to nearby Sonoma County, and lived in Santa Rosa, California, where Wood was noticed during a film shoot in downtown Santa Rosa. Her mother soon moved the family to Los Angeles and pursued a career for her daughter. Wood's younger sister, Svetlana Zacharenko - now known as Lana Wood - who also became an actress and later a Bond girl. She and Lana have an older half sister, Olga Viriapaeff. Though Natalie had been born "Natalia Zacharenko," her father later changed the family name to "Gurdin" and Natalie was often known as "Natasha," the diminutive of Natalia. The studio executives at RKO Radio Pictures later changed her name to "Natalie Wood", a name she never liked.