Birthday: Jul 20, 1938

Birthplace: Santa Catalina Island, California, USA

Biography: Natalie Wood (July 20, 1938 – November 29, 1981) was an American film actress. Wood was born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko in San Francisco, California, to Russian Orthodox immigrants, Nikolai and Maria Zakharenko. Her parents changed their surname to the less cumbersome "Gurdin", and by the age of 4 she was billed as Natasha Gurdin. Her mother tightly managed and controlled the young girl's career and personal life from her start in films at the age of five. She starred in multiple films as a c... ... (read more...) hild including Miracle on 34th Street in 1947. Her father is described by Wood's biographers as a passive alcoholic who went along with his wife's demands. Her sister, Lana Wood, is also an actress, notably a Bond girl, and was a Playboy playmate.

At 16, Natalie was awarded the role of Judy in Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause, co-starring James Dean, Sal Mineo, and Dennis Hopper, signalling the start of her adult acting career. Most biographers claim that she slept with Ray and Hopper. Wood was one of the relatively few child stars to make a successful transition to adult stardom. By the time she was 28, she was already a three-time Oscar nominee, with nominations for Rebel Without a Cause, Splendor in the Grass and Love With the Proper Stranger.

Another of her widely noted films was the Leonard Bernstein musical West Side Story, in which she played Maria. Wood was initially signed to do her own singing but in the end she was dubbed by professional singer Marni Nixon, which is said to have caused her disappointment. Nonetheless, she enjoyed worldwide celebrity, comparable to that of Elizabeth Taylor. As a restless on-screen companion of James Dean and an off-screen date of Elvis Presley, she was much admired and envied by the young girls of the day. One of her judgments of Elvis was, "He can sing but he can’t do much else."