Natalie Wood was a Hollywood darling at the height of the Golden Age of filmmaking. Having begun her career as a toddler, the actress was one of few who were fortunate enough to make the transition from child star to successful young adult performer. Before her tragic and untimely death at age 43, Wood was the recipient of numerous accolades, including four Golden Globe wins and three Academy Award nominations. But her life behind the scenes was anything but glamorous. From the complicated relationship she had with her mother, to her many public romances, to the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death, here are the heartbreaking details of Natalie Wood's life.
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00:00Already a famous child star, Natalie Wood's acting career blossomed in the 1950s and 60s.
00:06But even before her mysterious tragic death in 1981,
00:10Wood led a tumultuous Hollywood life. Here are some heartbreaking details about Natalie Wood.
00:16Natalie Wood was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko to Russian immigrant parents
00:21in San Francisco and grew up in poverty amid a complex family situation.
00:26While Wood was adored by her parents, both had their vices.
00:29Her father, Nick, worked hard to provide for his family, but the struggles of trying to
00:33survive during and after the Great Depression, as well as anti-immigrant discrimination,
00:38contributed to his alcoholism. Wood's mother, Maria, had her own issues,
00:43being described as spirited but morally gray. Maria loved her children, but the Russian
00:48refugee was described as a pathological liar by her youngest daughter, Lana.
00:52One could never be 100 percent sure that what came out of the dramatic, superstitious Maria's
00:57mouth was the truth. In a sense, Wood's mother was a bit of an actress herself,
01:01reinventing herself as she saw fit and playing new roles in the film of her life.
01:06It was likely Maria's fixation with make-believe, in addition to a fortune-teller predicting that
01:10her second child would be known throughout the world, that led her to obsess over Natalie.
01:16While Natalie Wood was renowned for her talent and star quality from a very young age,
01:21it's hard to know whether the actress would have entered the entertainment field herself
01:24if she'd never been groomed for the cameras by her mother. Since she missed the chance
01:28to become a performer herself, Maria feverishly pushed her daughters into the entertainment
01:33industry. As a child, Wood was genuinely talented at acting, but she was also impressionable and
01:39eager to please her mother. According to Suzanne Finstad, in Natasha, the Biography of Natalie
01:44Wood, Wood's older sister, Olga, denies their mother's claims that young Natasha,
01:50Natalie's nickname as Child, was the one who expressed an interest in acting.
01:54Four-year-old Natasha was a natural when she performed, but she was not movie-struck. Maria
01:59was the one stalking movie crews, seeking parts for herself and Natasha. Natasha just went along.
02:04Maria's obsession with making her second daughter a star would lead to some harsh behavior. As told
02:09by the BBC, Wood's mother once prepped her for a crying scene by ripping the wings off of a live
02:14butterfly. Finstad also described similar episodes, with Maria bringing up the family's
02:19dead dog or telling other harsh stories about animal cruelty in order to get her daughter
02:24emotionally distraught for a scene. By the time nine-year-old Natalie Wood was slated to do a
02:30scene that involved running across a bridge, the Child actress was already wary of water.
02:35According to Suzanne Finstad, Wood was highly influenced to fear water by her mother,
02:39who had been told by a fortune teller that she would die drowning. Olga,
02:43Natalie's older sister, explained,
02:45"[My mother was afraid of swimming, and she was told that she'd drown,
02:48so this communicated itself to Natalie."
02:51"'My mother would never learn to swim either because she didn't know who was going to drown.'"
02:55This phobia of water manifested itself in the young actress in a number of ways,
02:59including a refusal to learn how to swim and a fear of submerging her head underwater to
03:04have her hair washed. In a scarily foreshadowing episode, Wood's aquaphobia got worse on the set
03:10of The Green Promise, when the nine-year-old was involved in an accident that led to her
03:14nearly drowning. As described by Harper's Bazaar, the scene involved Wood running across a bridge
03:19that would collapse once she was on the other side. Unfortunately, the bridge fell through
03:23while the Child actress was still on it, leaving her with a broken wrist and a strengthened,
03:28lifelong fear of water. The starlet would wear bracelets on her left wrist for the rest of her
03:33life in order to cover the protruding bone that remained visible after the accident.
03:38After years of researching her biography on Wood, Suzanne Finstad was able to reveal a tragic
03:43episode that occurred when the actress was only 16. The episode happened when Wood was called
03:48up to a hotel suite to read for a part for her childhood idol. Tragically, the young actress
03:53was then brutally assaulted by, as Finstad describes, a married movie star who was 20
03:58years Wood's senior. Threatened and traumatized, Wood never reported it, telling only a handful
04:04of friends. Throughout the remainder of the actress' life, her attack remained a secret,
04:08but in 2018, on the podcast Fatal Voyage The Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood,
04:13Wood's sister Lana confirmed the attack, adding in the details that it occurred at the Chateau
04:18Marmont Hotel. Lana also had this to say about her sister's attack.
04:22Many, many years later, Natalie only alluded to the fact that something bad had happened,
04:27and, in a way, blamed my mom for being too eager for Natalie to get roles.
04:32Natalie Wood worked during an era in Hollywood when studios had full ownership over actors'
04:37careers. Actresses like Wood, who was trapped under this system since she was a child,
04:42rarely had control over the roles they took. Over the years, though, as she became older and more
04:48successful, Wood began to fight back. In 1959, the actress refused roles in The Miracle and
04:54A Summer Place. To drive her point even further, she refused to appear on set for the filming of
04:59The Young Philadelphians. Rather than simply letting her go, Warner Bros. proceeded to put
05:04her on suspension for 18 months, the punishment being that if she wouldn't work for Warner Bros.,
05:09she couldn't work for anywhere else. The studio went on to publicly claim that Wood's break from
05:14acting was due to salary disputes, but the young actress made it clear that it was about parts.
05:20Fortunately, her standoff with studio head Jack Warner actually led to a small victory,
05:24with Wood winning the right to choose one picture a year. Her first choice?
05:29The blockbuster West Side Story.
05:32When teen star Natalie Wood and up-and-coming heartthrob Robert Wagner first got together,
05:37they were Hollywood's fairytale couple and a hot topic for teen gossip. Their relationship
05:41was actually set up by the studios in 1956 as a way to promote both the 18-year-old actress
05:47and 26-year-old actor, but the feelings became real and the two married a year later. Unfortunately,
05:53the so-called perfect couple suddenly called it quits in 1961, stirring up rumors that the
05:58marriage failed due to Wood's infidelity. For decades, an affair with her co-star Warren Beatty
06:04was the accepted killer of the Wood-Wagner union. However, recent digging by Suzanne Finstad
06:09revealed that this was untrue. In talking with a few of Wood's close friends, her mother's best
06:14friend, and Wood's sister, Finstad found that it was actually Wood who was cheated on. In an
06:19unreleased memoir, Wood wrote,
06:21"...it is too painful for me to recall in print the incident that led to the final breakup.
06:26It was more than a final straw. It was reality crushing the fragile web of romantic fantasies
06:31with sledgehammer force."
06:33Still, while the incident was serious enough to lead to the dissolution of their marriage,
06:37the two were able to reconcile, remarrying a decade later. To this day,
06:41Wagner denies that he ever had an affair while married to Wood.
06:45After her first marriage to Robert Wagner ended, Natalie Wood went through an unfortunate
06:50downward spiral. She began a relationship with Warren Beatty, which lasted two years,
06:55but was filled with toxicity. Following her breakup with Beatty in 1964, Wood continued
07:00to go through a string of famous men, including actor Michael Caine, with whom she starred
07:05alongside in the 1975 film Peeper. Meanwhile, the mid-60s proved to also be unforgiving to
07:11her career. Many of Wood's films during this period flopped, including 1967's Sex and the
07:17Single Girl and 1965's The Great Race. To add insult to injury, Wood was even awarded Harvard
07:23Lampoon's Worst Actress of the Year award.
07:26"...once got an award. I don't remember the exact title,
07:29but it was something like Worst Actress of the Year."
07:32"...I can't remember the exact title either."
07:34Her failed films and rocky love life had the actress in a bad state mentally and emotionally,
07:39with Wood at one point staying in bed and refusing to see anyone but her psychiatrist
07:44and former secretary.
07:46By 1966, the failures of her recent films and relationships had taken a serious toll
07:52on Natalie Wood. According to Warren Harris, author of Natalie & R.J., The Star-Crossed
07:57Love Affair of Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner, Wood was already in a bad psychological state
08:02when ex-boyfriend Warren Beatty showed up without any warning in order to convince her to join his
08:07next movie. She had already refused once, adamantly against the idea of not having access to her
08:12therapist for those months of filming in Texas. While no one knows how the exchange between the
08:18two went, what is known is that right after Beatty left, Wood attempted to take her own
08:22life by swallowing a handful of barbiturates. Somewhere between taking the pills and falling
08:27unconscious, Wood must have changed her mind because her housemate, Mart Grawley,
08:31heard her call for him. He found her unconscious on the stairs and immediately took her to the
08:36hospital, where they pumped her stomach. When her sister visited her at the hospital,
08:39Wood confessed,
08:41"...I didn't want to live anymore. Now I do."
08:44After the incident, the actress took a break from working for three years in order to focus
08:48on her mental health. If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts,
08:52please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK 8255.
09:00In an awful incident that is remembered and pondered to this day, Natalie Wood died on
09:05November 29th, 1981, at only 43 years old. The exact circumstances of her death remain unknown,
09:12but the details of the events leading up to it go like this. As documented by Harper's Bazaar,
09:17Wood and her husband, Robert Wagner, frequently visited Catalina Island on their yacht,
09:22Splendor, and had decided to embark on the familiar trip after Thanksgiving.
09:27Actor Christopher Walken and the yacht's captain, Dennis Davern, joined the couple.
09:31After a boozy night out on Catalina, the foursome left a restaurant and stumbled their way back to
09:36the yacht around 10.30 p.m. About a half-hour later, the group noticed that Wood had disappeared
09:41along with the boat's dinghy, but it took over four hours before the Coast Guard was called
09:46at 3.30 a.m. It wasn't until 8 a.m. that her body was found about a mile from the yacht.
09:52During the autopsy, it was discovered that Wood's blood alcohol content was 0.14 percent
09:58and that she had several bruises across her body, prompting the medical examiner's office
10:02to declare on November 30th that her death was an accident, with Wood likely falling
10:07overboard when trying to board the dinghy. The case was officially closed on December 11th,
10:12but speculation over the real details of her death would persist long after.
10:17The suspicious aspects of Natalie Wood's death would keep the public from accepting it was an
10:22accident for four decades. In 2011, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department reopened
10:27her case after receiving additional information from unidentified sources who contacted the
10:32authorities.
10:33I think what's important is to get to the bottom of what actually did happen,
10:37and I think that's what they should be allowed to do."
10:40That same year, Dennis DeVern explicitly stated that he had lied to the police during the first
10:45investigation, claiming that Robert Wagner, who he heard get into a heated argument with Wood,
10:50was responsible for the actress' death. By 2013, Wood's cause of death was changed to drowning
10:56and other undetermined factors, and five years later, Wagner was declared a person of interest
11:01in the case. Although he continues to deny any involvement, in 2020, Suzanne Finstad revealed
11:07that she had found additional information which suggests that Wood's death wasn't an accident.
11:12Most enlightening was Dr. Michael Franco's observations from when he was an intern at
11:17the L.A. coroner's office. He had noticed that the abrasions on Wood's legs were in a direction
11:23that suggested she was getting pushed off a boat, not trying to get on. However, Dr. Franco's
11:28concerns fell on deaf ears, with the coroner telling him, quote,
11:32"'Some things are best left unsaid.'"
11:34It would take nearly 40 years for Dr. Franco to come forward,
11:38sharing his suspicions of a cover-up with the investigators in charge of the reopened case.