Ava Gardner was a renowned actress who was among the leading heroines in Hollywood during the 1950s and 1960s. Considered to be one of the most attractive women of her day, she rose to fame with her appearance of the glamorous beauty, Kitty Collins, in ‘The Killers’. Born into a wide family, she lost her father at a young age. Growing up during the big Depression, her poor family could barely manage to survive. Ava became an actress totally by chance—her brother-in-law, a photographer, had taken a beautiful picture of hers which was sent to MGM studio. The dark-haired beauty with the bewitching smile was called for an audition and soon found herself signing a contract with the famous studio.

During her initial years, she received only small characters, however, her fortunes transformed when she was chosen to perform the femme fatale, Kitty Collins, in ‘The Killers’ which settled her as a leading lady. Propelled by the success of the movie, she went to play substantial characters in high-profile films from the 1950s onwards. The film ‘The Barefoot Contessa’ in which she worked with Humphrey Bogart is considered to be her signature film as she had a routine of going barefoot in real-life too.

Ava Gardner Wiki/Bio

Birth Name	Ava Lavinia Gardner
Nick Name	Snowdrop, Angel, The Christmas Eve Girl
Age	(at time of her death) 67 Years
Birth Place	Grabtown, North Carolina, United States
Date of Birth	24 December 1922
Death Date	25 January 1990
Death Place	Westminster, London, England, United Kingdom
Death Cause	Pneumonia
Religion	She was raised in a Baptist household but with advancing age, she became disillusioned with religion and eventually became an atheist.
Sun Sign/Zodiac Sign	Capricorn
Nationality	American
Residence	Westminster, London, England, United Kingdom
Home Town	Grabtown, North Carolina, United State
Hobbies	Not Available
Family
Mother’s Name	Mary Elizabeth Gardner (Dormitory Housekeeper, Boarding House Manager)
Father’s Name	Jonas Bailey Gardner (Tobacco and Cotton Farmer, Sawmill Worker)
Brother	• Raymond Gardner (Older) • Melvin Gardner (Older)
Sister	• Beatrice Gardner (Older) • Elsie Mae Gardner (Older) • Inez Gardner (Older) • Myra Gardner (Older)
Boyfriends/Affairs
Affairs/Boyfriends	• Frank Sinatra (m. 1951–1957) • Artie Shaw (m. 1945–1946) • Mickey Rooney (m. 1942–1943) • Joseph M. Schenck • Jorge Guinle • Bugsy Siegel • Charles Feldman • John Huston • Dick Cowell • Helmut Dantine • Ralph Kiner • Frank Ryan • Mel Tormé • Robert Stack • Jess Conrad • Earl Muntz • John Carroll • Vinicius de Moraes • Farley Granger • Howard Hughes • David Remar (1943) • Alexander D’Arcy (1944) • Mervyn LeRoy (1944) • Chris Peterson (1944) • Porfirio Rubirosa (1946) • Paul Bryan (1947) • Irving Reis (1947) • Turhan Bey (1947) • Greg Bautzer (1947) • Howard Duff (1947-1950) • Mickey Cohen (1948) • Huntington Hartford (1948) • Robert Taylor (1948-1953) • Robert Walker (1948-1949) • Van Heflin (1949) • Peter Lawford (1949) • Robert Mitchum (1949) • Mario Cabre (1949) • Paul Brooks (1951) • John F. Kennedy (1952) • Fernando Lamas (1952) • Barbara Payton (1952) – RUMOR • Lana Turner (1952) – RUMOR • Joseph L. Mankiewicz (1954) • David Hanna (1954) • Luis Miguel Dominguin (1954) • Billy Daniels (1954) • Vic Damone (1955) • Steve McQueen (1955) • Walter Chiari (1955-1957) • Sammy Davis Jr. (1956) • Ernest Hemingway (1957) • Marlon Brandon (1957) • Robert Evans (1957-1958) • Marlon Brando (1957) • Peter Viertel (1958) • Anthony Franciosa (1958) • Johnny Stompanato (1958) • Jimmy Kind (1958-1959) • Sydney Guilaroff (1959) • Tony Trabert (1959-1960) • Peter O’Toole (1960) • Claude Terrail (1960) • Peter Duchin (1962) • Kirk Douglas (1963) • Richard Burton (1963) • George C. Scott (1964-1969) • Omar Sharif (1968) • Prinz Von Hohenlohe-Langenburg (1970-1972) • Ben Tatar (1973-1986)
Marital Status, Husband and Children
Husband/Spouse	• Frank Sinatra (m. 1951–1957) • Artie Shaw (m. 1945–1946) • Mickey Rooney (m. 1942–1943)
Children	None
Education
School	Rock Ridge High School
College/University	Atlantic Christian College
Educational Qualification	Graduated
Profession	Actress, Singer
Brands Endorsed	Ava Gardner had neither appeared in any TV commercial nor had she done endorsement work for any brand.
Career Manager	MGM
Height, Weight, and Figure Measurements
Height (Approx.)	in centimeters- 168 cm in meters- 1.68 m in feet inches- 5’6”
Weight (Approx.)	in kilograms- 54 kg in pounds- 119 lbs
Figure Measurements
Breast Size	36 Inches
Hips Size	37 Inches
Waist Size	23 Inches
Extra Ordinary Features
Race / Ethnicity	White
Hair Color	Dark Brown
Eye Color	Green
S*xual Orientation	Straight
Dress Size	8
Shoe Size	6
Favourite Things
Favourite Pastime	Flamenco
Controversies	None

Life Journey

Ava Gardner was born on December 24, 1922, in Grabtown, North Carolina, the youngest of seven children. She had two older brothers, Raymond and Melvin, and four older sisters, Beatrice, Elsie Mae, Inez, and Myra. Her parents, Mary Elizabeth “Molly” and Jonas Bailey Gardner (1878–1938) were poor tobacco sharecroppers. While accounts of her background vary, Ava’s only documented ancestry was English.

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She was raised in the Baptist faith of her mother. While the children were still young, the Gardner’s lost their property, and Molly received an offer to work as a cook and housekeeper at a dormitory for teachers at the nearby Brogden School that included board for the family and where Jonas continued sharecropping tobacco and supplemented the dwindling work with odd jobs at sawmills.

In 1931, the teachers’ school closed forcing the family to finally give up on their property dreams and they moved to a larger city, Newport News, Virginia, where Molly found work managing a boarding house for the city’s many ships workers.

While in Newport News, Jonas became ill and died from bronchitis in 1938, when Ava was 15 years old. After her father’s death, the family moved to Rock Ridge near Wilson, North Carolina, where Molly ran another boarding house for teachers. Ava attended high school in Rock Ridge and she graduated from there in 1939. She then attended secretarial classes at Atlantic Christian College in Wilson for about a year.

Ava Gardner Net Worth

Ava Gardner had a net worth equal to $200 thousand at the time of her death in 1990 (after adjusting for inflation).

Museum

Ava Gardner Museum is located in downtown Smithfield, North Carolina, and holds an extensive collection of artifacts from Ava Gardner’s career and private life.

The original collection was started in 1941 by a fan, Tom Banks, who at age 12 met Ava on the campus of Atlantic Christian College (now Barton College), where she was studying to become a secretary. When she did not return to school the next year, he saw a photograph of Gardner in a newspaper and learned that she had been signed to a movie contract with MGM.

The Banks family devoted most of their lives to collecting memorabilia from every source possible. In the early 1980s, Dr. Banks purchased the Brogden Teacherage, the house where Ava lived from age 2 to 13 and operated his own Ava Gardner Museum during the summers for nine years. Dr. Banks (he was a psychologist) suffered a stroke at the museum in August 1989 and died a few days later. Gardner died 5 months later on January 25, 1990. In the summer of 1990, Mrs. Banks donated the collection to the Town of Smithfield, being assured that a permanent museum would be maintained in Johnston County, Gardner’s birthplace and final resting place. Lorraine died a year and three days later on January 28, 1991, of complications of an asthma attack.

The Ava Gardner Museum was incorporated in 1996 as a 501(c)3 organization to manage and care for the Museum’s collection of personal items and movie memorabilia given to the Town of Smithfield by Tom and Lorraine Banks. Since that time, the Ava Gardner Museum Foundation has continued to acquire artifacts related to Gardner’s life and is committed to preserving these items and displaying them in an educational manner.

In August 1999, the Museum’s Board of Directors made an investment in downtown Smithfield by purchasing and renovating a 6,400-square-foot (590 m²) building that became the permanent home for the Museum’s collection. In October 2000, the new Ava Gardner Museum opened its doors and has continued to draw approximately 12,000 visitors annually.

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Ava Gardner Quotes

1. “The truth is, honey, I’ve enjoyed my life. I’ve had a hell of a good time.”
2. “When I’m old and gray, I wish to have a house by the sea. With a lot of wonderful chums, good music, and booze around. And a damn good kitchen to cook in.”
3. “S*x isn’t all that important, but it is when you love someone very much.”
4. “I want to live to 150 years old, but the day I die, I want it to be with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other.”
5. “When I lose my sensitivity, honey, you can’t find it anyplace.”
6. “Go fuck yourself,” I responded, always the lady. “I’m staying here.”
7. “When you have to face up to the fact that marriage to the man you love is really over, that’s very tough, sheer agony. In that kind of distressing situation, I always go away and cut myself off from the world. Also, I sober up shortly when there is fairly bad news in my life; I never face it with alcohol in my brain. I just rented a house in Palm Springs and sit there and just gone through for a couple of weeks. I went through there until I was strong enough to face it.”
8. “God knows I’ve got so many defects myself, I sought to be able to understand and forgive them in others. But I don’t.”
9. “Maybe, in the final judgment, they saw me as something I wasn’t and I struggled to turn them into something they could never be. I liked them all but maybe I never admitted any of them. I don’t think they understood me.”
10. “I have only one law in acting trust the director, and give him heart and soul.”
11. “Hell, I suppose if you stick around long enough they have to say something good about you.”
12. “Deep down, I’m pretty superficial.”
13. “I think the main reason my marriages failed is that I always loved too well but never wisely.”
14. “I want to remember it all, the good times and the bad times, the late nights, the boozing, the dancing into dawns, and all the great and not-so-great people I met and loved in those years”
15. “Our phone bills were astronomical, and when I found the letters Frank wrote to me the other day, the total could fill a suitcase. Every single day during our relationship, no matter where in the world I was, I’d get a telegram from Frank saying he loved me and missed me. He was a man who was desperate for companionship and love. Can you wonder that he always had mine!”
16. “I hate cheating. I won’t put up with it. I don’t do it myself.”
17. “Great idea,” I said. “Call the police. Call the fucking police.”
18. “Don’t think for a minute that bad publicity and endless criticism don’t leave their claw marks on everyone concerned. Your friends try to cheer you up by saying lightly, “I suppose you get used to it and ignore it.” You try. You try damned hard. But you never get used to it. It always wounds and hurts.”
19. “I’m here to tell you, there ain’t much forgiveness in that old-time religion. That particular savior was a mean son of a bitch. If you sinned, honey, he was going to get you, no doubt about it.”
20. “And I won ’em back fair and square. So what are you going to do about it? Want to fight? Who wants the first bloody nose?”
21. “He will always be my Sir Galahad.”
22. “In one scene, when I was expected to say, “In a pig’s eye you are,” what came out was, “In a pig’s ass you are.” Old habits die awfully hard.”
23. “And the news got worse. It emerged that there was this whole other person Jesus Christ whose birthday a lot of people influenced to confuse with mine. I was personally outraged. It was a long time before I forgave the Lord for that.”
24. “So this was where lust was satisfied. If I’d been an old-time miner I’d have asked for my gold nugget back.”
25. “I caught his drift, but I wasn’t going to argue for a single second. Just get me to the Hampshire House, that’s all I cared about. Besides, how could I say, “No, I’m not a pr*stitute I’m Mrs. Frank Sinatra out for an early morning walk in the rain”?”
26. “I either write the books or sell the jewels, and I’m kinda sentimental about the jewels.”
27. “Then, aided by the booze, like a fool I tossed off one of those throwaway lines that would have been better thrown away. “Ah, Frank! I thought you were going to be down here fucking Lana.”
28. “He always called me Daughter. It was to distinguish me from his sister Ava. I loved being called Daughter. It sounded so possessive, and to be possessed when you are a child is just a wonderful feeling. It makes you feel safe. It makes you feel loved.”

Ava Gardner Movies And TV Shows

• Her sister’s husband, Larry Tarr, a professional photographer took pictures of the highly beautiful teenager which he sent to the MGM Studio. Affected by her beauty, Al Altman, the head of MGM’s New York Talent Department asked her for an interview and offered her a contract in 1941.
• During her primary years, she got only small appearances in the MGM movies. She performed up to 15 minor parts before her career originally took off. She was lent to Universal Studios which cast her as the seductress Kitty Collins in the film noir, ‘The Killers’ in 1946. This was the breakthrough role that got her acting skills noticed.
• She was chosen to perform the character of Julie Laverne in the musical ‘Show Boat’ in 1951. The film was a commercial success. It was followed by her characters in ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’ (1952), ‘Lone Star’ (1952), and ‘Mogambo’ (1953).
• In 1954, she emerged in what would become her signature film, ‘The Barefoot Contessa’ which rounded around the story of a fictional Spanish s*x symbol, Maria Vargas. The movie also had Humphrey Bogart in the cast.
• She worked along with Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, and Anthony Perkins in the post-apocalyptic drama film, ‘On the Beach’ in 1959. The story was set in the future, months after World War III which had destroyed the whole northern hemisphere.
• She had collaborated with Kirk Douglas in the political thriller, ‘Seven Days in May’ in 1964. The story was inspired by the right-wing anti-Communist political activities of General Edwin A. Walker after his resignation from the military.
• She emerged in the film ‘The Night of the Iguana’ in 1964 which was based upon a Tennessee Williams play.
• The story rounded around an atheist clergyman, a gentle artist, and an aged poet.
• During the 1970s she formed a penchant for disaster movies and acted in quite a few of them: ‘Earthquake’ (1974), ‘The Cassandra Crossing’ (1976), and ‘City on Fire’ (1979).

Death

After a lifetime of smoking, Gardner underwent from emphysema and lupus. Two strokes in 1986 left her moderately paralyzed and bedridden. Although Gardner could afford her medical expenses, Sinatra wished to pay for her visit to a specialist in the United States, and she granted him to make the arrangements for a medically staffed private plane.

She went through a bad fall a week before she died, and she lay on the floor, alone and unable to move until her housekeeper returned. Her last words (to her housekeeper) were revealed: “I’m so tired.” She died of pneumonia at the age of 67, at her London home, 34 Ennismore Gardens, where she had resided since 1968.

Gardner was buried in the Sunset Memorial Park, Smithfield, North Carolina, next to her siblings and their parents, Jonas and Molly Gardner. In the town of Smithfield, there is the Ava Gardner Museum incorporated in 1996.

Facts

1. In 1995, the Empire magazine placed her on the 68th spot in a list featuring 100 S*xiest Stars in the film history.
2. She especially gained flamenco for her character in the movie, The Barefoot Contessa. Even after the shooting was done for the movie, she continued acting it, and that finally became such a big pastime for her that Ava used to stay occupied dancing through the nights.
3. She was regularly called by MGM for an audition. She was 18 years old at that time. In 1941, she signed a standard deal with MGM and moved to Hollywood with her sister Beatrice joining her.
4. In 1968, she shifted to London and went through an elective hysterectomy as she was worried about contracting uterine cancer, which had previously challenged her mother’s life.
5. In her later years, she suffered from emphysema, which was brought on by her lifelong smoking habit. She was also diagnosed with an unidentified auto-immune disorder.
6. In 1986, she suffered from 2 strokes, which left her bedridden and partially paralyzed.
7. A week before her death, she suffered a bad fall after which she was unable to move and was forced to stay lying on the floor alone for a long time before her housekeeper discovered her.
8. In February 1960, she was honored with her Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1560 Vine Street in Hollywood.
9. While she was living in Spain, she became a good friend of the legendary writer, Ernest Hemingway. In her career, she had also worked in 3 movies based on Hemingway’s works – The Sun Also Rises, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and The Killers.
10. The American Film Institute included her in their list featuring Greatest Female Stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
11. She doesn’t have any social media account.

FAQs

Sam Elliott is an American actor, who is famous for performing characters like ‘General Ross’ in ‘Hulk’ (2003) and ‘Carter Slade’ in ‘Ghost Rider’ (2007). He is also known for playing gun-slinging cowboys in films like ‘The Quick and the Dead’ and ‘Tombstone,’ as well as his role in the cult favorite ‘The Big Lebowski. Well-built, tall, and thanked with rough good-looks, he was often cast as a cowboy and rancher. His deep, thrilly voice and Western drawl added to his charm as the ultimate on-screen American cowboy. Renowned for his passion for acting and devotion towards his profession, Elliot knew from the time he was a child that he was meant to be an actor. He was an obstinate youngster who often got into arguments with his father who opposed his choice of profession.

As a college student, he played one of the leads in stage production and received rave reviews for his performance. Soon, he decided to make it big in Hollywood. He began his acting career from the stage and made his film debut in ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ in 1969. Subsequently, he became a good applicant for Western movies and was periodically cast as a cowboy and rancher. When the popularity of Western films began to decline, he operated on television and settled himself as a successful television actor. Well past his prime, the gallant actor shows no signs of slowing down as he is as effective as ever in films and television.

Sam Elliott Bio/ Wiki

Family, Education & More

Sam Elliott was born on August 9, 1944, in Sacramento, California. His Mother Glynn Mamie, a physical training instructor, and high school teacher. His father Henry Nelson Elliott, worked as a predator control specialist for the Department of the Interior. His parents were originally from El Paso, Texas, and Elliott has an ancestor who served as a surgeon at the Battle of San Jacinto. He moved from California to Portland, Oregon, with his parents when he was 13 years old.

Sam spent his young age living in northeast Portland and graduated from David Douglas High School in 1962. After graduating from high school, Elliott attended college at the University of Oregon as an English and psychology major for two terms before dropping out. He returned to Portland and joined Clark College nearby Vancouver, Washington. He completed a two-year program and was cast as Big Jule, one of the leads, in a stage production of Guys and Dolls.

After his graduation from Clark in 1965, he re-enrolled at the University of Oregon and pledged at the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. He dropped out again before completing his studies after his father died of a heart attack.

Sam Elliott Net Worth

Ѕаm Еllіоtt hаѕ аn еѕtіmаtеd nеt wоrth оf mоrе thаn $12 mіllіоn. Тhіѕ moment соmеѕ frоm hіѕ саrееr аѕ а ѕuссеѕѕful асtоr. Не hаѕ арреаrеd іn mаnу fіlmѕ аnd tеlеvіѕіоn ѕеrіеѕ ѕіnсе thе lаtе 1960ѕ. Не hаѕ аlѕо famous іntо vоісе асtіng.

Іn 2018, hе wіll bе ѕееn іn thе fіlmѕ ‘А Ѕtаr Іѕ Воrn’ аnd ‘Тhе Маn Whо Кіllеd Ніtlеr Аnd Тhеn Тhе Віgfооt.’ Еllіоtt іѕ аlѕо а рrоduсеr аnd іѕ сurrеntlу арреаrіng іn thе tеlеvіѕіоn ѕеrіеѕ ‘Тhе Rаnсh’ аѕ Веаu Веnnеtt.

Wife/ Spouse

Katharine Ross (1978-Present): Sam Elliott and Katharine Ross are one of the lucky few exceptions. The couple has been married for 34 years, which is quite the benchmark for the movie business. Sam started dating actress Katharine Ross in 1978. They had fallen in love while shooting for the horror movie, The Legacy.

They were earlier cast in the 1969 release, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid but as both of them were cast in minor roles. They didn’t get to meet each other. They took their relationship to the next level in 1984 by getting married. The same year, they welcomed a daughter, Cleo Rose Elliott, into their family.

Debut Movie: ‘Butch Cassidy’

Sam moved to Hollywood and got his first acting role as an appearance in the 1969 classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In this movie, Robert Redford and Paul Newman entertained audiences as the titular pair of Western outlaws. Elliott’s role, “Card Player No. 2,” was somewhat less prominent.

As a bit player, Elliott never got a chance to speak with the movie’s leading actress Katharine Ross. She was cast as Redford’s lover. Nearly ten years later, Elliott and Ross would meet again while on the film The Legacy (1978).

Exploring His Own Path

Through the 1970s, Elliott found regular work in television roles on shows. In this period he appeared in Mission: Impossible, Gunsmoke, and Hawaii Five-O. He also played Evel Knievel in a TV biopic about the legendary motorcycle-jumping daredevil. Though Elliott’s good looks could have placed him squarely in the heartthrob category, he shunned a conventional Hollywood career.

He not only refused typical leading man roles but began maintaining what would become his signature long hair and a handlebar mustache. He said “I don’t want to be known as an s*x symbol,” he told Playgirl magazine in 1976. “There’s a great scar that goes with that tag. I want to be a Sam Elliott.”

‘Mask’

Being “a Sam Elliott” meant taking on more challenging, supporting roles in a wide array of films. Elliott had a supporting role in Mask (1985) opposite Cher, a drama based on the true story of Rocky Dennis, a boy who suffered from craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, a rare and disfiguring disorder.

After four years later he played a sympathetic father figure in the Christmas film Prancer (1989).

‘Road House’

Three years later, Elliott earned serious fans with 1989’s Road House, playing the mentor to Patrick Swayze’s James Dalton, a bouncer with a mysterious past.

‘The Big Lebowski’

The actor’s most loved role, however, may have been his role as the Stranger, the mysterious novelist of the Coen Brothers’ cult classic The Big Lebowski (1998), which still inspires fans to approach him in the street begging him to say, just once, “The Dude abides.”

Western Movies

Elliott may be best known for his work filming Western heroes and outlaws. Over the course of his career, he has played gun-slinging cowboys in both television shows and films including The Quick and the Dead (1987), Houston: The Legend of Texas (1986), Tombstone (1993) and You Know My Name (1999).

For his work as an on-screen cowboy, Elliott was inducted in 2007 into the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. Elliott has said of his penchant for Westerns: “I think it has something to do with integrity and a man’s word and honor and all that kind of stuff like values, morality, all that kind of stuff that everybody looks kind of down their nose at.”

Later Film and TV Shows

Elliott has played Lee Scoresby in 2007’s The Golden Compass, the first film based on Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy; a pilot in 2009’s Up in the Air; and the voice of Chupadogra in 2010’s animated Marmaduke.

Additionally, he rode his convincing reputation as a Western-type to small-screen gigs on Justified and The Ranch, as well as a starring role in The Hero (2017), about an aging Western actor dealing with a terminal illness.

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‘A Star Is Born’

In 2018, Elliott seen in the eagerly anticipated remake of A Star Is Born. As the half-brother and manager of Bradley Cooper’s struggling country music singer. The performance impressed people, resulting in an Academy Award nomination for the veteran actor.

The awards buzz helped raise the profile of another Elliott’s project, The Man Who Killed Hitler and Bigfoot, scheduled for an American theatrical release in February 2019.

Elliott’s work may delve into the realm of fantasy, but that’s ultimately how Elliott sees the real life of every actor. “We’re the great pretenders, some not so great probably, but that’s what we do,” Elliott said. “We pretend for a living.”

Facts

• He had to drop out of the 1982 thriller, The Ambush Murders due to illness. He was replaced by James Brolin in the project.
• He was in love with movies at a very young age. By the age of 9, he had realized that he wanted to become an actor.
• After dropping out of the final year at the University of Oregon, he moved to Los Angeles to study acting. To pay his bills, he used to work part-time in construction.
• For a very brief period of time, he also served in the California Army National Guard.
• In 2015, he was honored with induction into the International Mustache Hall of Fame in the film and television category.
• He was very keen to reprise the role of General Ross in the reboot The Incredible Hulk after having played it in 2003 release, Hulk. However, he was looked over in favor of William Hurt.
• While studying in college, he was pretty active in local and college theater and his portrayal of one of the leads in the production of Guys and Dolls was highly praised by local newspapers.
• When he got his breakthrough in show business in the 70s, he was counted amongst leading male s*x symbols. However, he wasn’t a fan of that tag as he believed there was a lot of disgrace attached to the tag.
• To prepare for his highly acclaimed role in Tombstone, he trained with renowned gun expert Thell Reed, who has trained leading actors such as Val Kilmer, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Russell Crowe.

FAQ’s

Natalie Wood was one of Hollywood golden stars and a legend both on and off the silver screen. Born to Russian immigrants, Wood found herself in the spotlight as a child, capturing the audience’s hearts in the holiday classic, “Miracle on 34th Street” (1947). Maintaining a successful career as an adult, she went on to turn in Oscar-nominated performances in the films “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955) and “Splendor in the Grass” (1961), as well as charming audiences as Maria in the hit musical “West Side Story” (1961). Wood’s storybook marriage to fellow actor Robert Wagner delighted movie fans – first, in the late 1950s, and later, following their divorce, when the couple reunited for a second go at the marriage in the early 1970s. Natalie Wood Age, Height, Death, Bio, Affairs, Wiki & More

With a personal life rivaling the story of any Hollywood movie, Wood was one of the most beloved actresses of her time, even long after her mystical drowning death in 1981, which left behind more questions than answers. Although investigations into Wood’s mysterious death seemed to be re-opened every few years, with Wagner being named a “person of interest” in early 2018, it remained officially unsolved.

Natalie Wood (born July 20, 1938 – death November 29, 1981) was a Russian-American actress who began her career in film as a child and became a Hollywood star as a young adult. Wood received three Oscar nominations before she was 25. She began acting in films at age 4 and was given a co-starring role at age 8 in Miracle on 34th Street (1947).

Natalie Wood Bio/Wiki

Family, Education & More

Born Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko on July 20, 1938, in San Francisco, CA to her Russian parents, father Nikolai Gurdin, an architect and set designer, and mother, ballet dancer Maria Gurdin. Wood’s parents later changed their surname to Gurdin while Wood was still a baby. Spending the early part of her childhood in Santa Rosa, CA, Wood was introduced to film at the age of four when her mother took her to a film audition to work as an extra. She landed a bit part as a little girl who drops her ice cream in the film “Happy Land” (1943), which was shot locally.

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Convinced that her daughter was meant for stardom, Wood’s mother pushed for the family to move to Hollywood so Wood could pursue acting. Landing her first credited role in 1946, Wood appeared alongside Orson Welles and Claudette Colbert in “Tomorrow is Forever.” As was the norm back then, the studio gave her a new name: Natalie Wood. Hailed as Hollywood’s newest child star before the film’s release, Wood’s career took off very quickly. The following year, she gave touching performances in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” (1947) and the holiday classic “Miracle on 34th Street” (1947) – the latter being her most famous film as a child actress.

Natalie Wood Net Worth

Natalie Wood Death

Natalie Wood drowned at age 43 during the making of Brainstorm while on a weekend boat trip to Catalina Island on board Wagner’s yacht Splendour. Many of the circumstances are unknown; it was never determined how she entered the water. Natalie Wood was with her husband Robert Wagner, Brainstorm co-star Christopher Walken, and Splendour’s captain Dennis Davern on the evening of November 28, 1981. Authorities recovered her body at 8 a.m. on November 29 one mile away from the boat, with a small Valiant-brand inflatable dinghy beached nearby. Robert Wagner said that she was not with him when he went to bed. The autopsy report revealed that she had bruises on her body and arms, as well as an abrasion on her left cheek.

In his memoir Pieces of My Heart, Robert Wagner acknowledged that he had an argument with Natalie Wood before she disappeared. The autopsy found that her blood alcohol content was 0.14% (the limit for driving a car legally was 0.10% in California at the time) and that there were traces of a motion-sickness pill and a painkiller in her bloodstream, both of which increase the effects of alcohol. Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi ruled her death to be accidental drowning and hypothermia. According to Noguchi, Wood had been drinking and she may have slipped while trying to re-board the dinghy. 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. Two witnesses had been on a boat nearby, and they stated that they had heard a woman scream for help during the night.

Natalie Wood was buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Representatives of international media, photographers, and members of the public tried to attend her funeral, but all were required to remain outside the cemetery walls. Among the celebrities were Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Fred Astaire, Rock Hudson, David Niven, Gregory Peck, Gene Kelly, Elia Kazan, and Laurence Olivier. Olivier flew in from London in order to attend the service

Career

Natalie Wood 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 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 cast 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. In 1970, Pregnant with her first child, Wood took semi-retirement as she wanted to pay more attention to her role as a mother.
Later on, she made television appearances with ‘The Affair (1973)’, ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1976)’ and ‘Switch (1978)’.

By the late ‘70s, Wood started working more frequently and did movies like: ‘Meteor (1979)’ starring opposite Sean Connery, ‘The Last Married Couple in America (1980)’ a sex comedy, ‘The Cracker Factory (1980)’ and TV series ‘Here to Eternity (1980)’.

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Some Known Facts About Natalie Wood

• Natalie Wood was born on July 20, 1938, in San Francisco, California to Russian and Ukrainian immigrants.
• She was named after director Sam Wood.
• She was fluent in Russian and English.
• Her favorite singer was Bob Dylan and her favorite actress was Vivien Leigh.
• Natalie Wood was commonly listed as 5′ 3″ wearing heels in movie magazines, though her actual height was 5′ 2″.
• She was named one of the top sex stars of the 1970s in Playboy magazine.
• She was placed at #70 in the list of “100 greatest stars of all time” by Entertainment Weekly.
• The daughter of Russian immigrants who changed the family name to Gurdin after becoming U.S. citizens. The stage name Natalie Wood was given to her by a Hollywood producer who thought it was more marketable. She never legally changed her name from Natasha Gurdin.
• Began career as a movie extra at age 4. At 8, she captured the hearts of audiences in the Christmas film Miracle on 34th Street.
• As a teen actress ready to escape her child-star image, she accepted a role opposite heartthrob James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and earned her first Academy Award nomination.
• Was associated romantically throughout her career with numerous high-profile men, including Elvis Presley, Warren Beatty, and Dennis Hopper.
• A publicity-staged date for her 18th birthday with handsome rising star Robert Wagner began a romance that resulted in marriage a year later.
• Despite her fear of water and inability to swim, director Elia Kazan manipulated her into performing the reservoir scene in Splendor in the Grass (1961) instead of using a stunt double.
• While her songs in West Side Story (1961) were recorded by renowned vocalist Marni Nixon, she did do her own singing the next year in Gypsy (1962).
• In 1962, she filed for divorce from her husband Wagner after reported infidelity. Married producer Richard Gregson in May 1969.
• After learning Gregson was having an affair, Natalie Wood filed for divorce in 1971 and found comfort in the arms of her first husband Wagner. They remarried in 1972.
• Accidentally drowned at age 43 while spending a weekend on her yacht with husband Wagner and friend Christopher Walken.
• Her death came while she’d been filming the sci-fi thriller Brainstorm; a new ending was devised using pre-existing footage.
• Following Natalie Wood death, her sister Lana Wood authored a tell-all memoir and later coproduced the 2004 television movie The Mystery of Natalie Wood, directed by Peter Bogdanovich.

FAQ’s

What Happened To Natalie Wood?

In 1981, Natalie’s Death Was Classified As An Accident And “Probable Drowning In Ocean.” Prominent Los Angeles Coroner Thomas Noguchi Cited In His Report “Numerous Bruises To Arms And Legs” That Were “Superficial And Probably Sustained At The Time Of Drowning” And Wrote, “No Other Trauma Noted And Foul Play Is Not.

What Did Natalie Wood Die Of?

Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas Noguchi Ruled Her Death To Be Accidental Drowning And Hypothermia. According To Noguchi, Wood Had Been Drinking And She May Have Slipped While Trying To Re-board The Dinghy.

Who Was On The Boat With Robert Wagner Natalie Wood?

Also Aboard That Night Were Captain Dennis Davern, Wagner, And Wood’s Friend And Fellow Actor, Christopher Walken. The Next Day, The Actress Was Found Floating In The Water Wearing A Red Down Jacket And Flannel Nightgown. After A Two-week Investigation, The Death Was Ruled An Accident.

What Year Did Natalie Wood Die?

29 November 1981, Natalie Wood/Date Of Death