Suzanne Finstad conducted more than four hundred interviews with Natalie's family, close friends, legendary costars, lovers, film crews, attorneys, police officials, and Dr.

Natasha is based on years of exhaustive research into Natalie's turbulent life and mysterious death. But the story of what she endured, of what her life was like when the doors of the soundstages slid closed, has long been obscured. She has been hailed, along with Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, as one of the top three movie actresses in film history, a legend in her own lifetime and beyond.

This led to other roles after the family moved to Los Angeles, including her first major part as Orson Welles’ orphaned ward in Tomorrow is Forever (1946), followed by that of the precocious child who comes to believe in Santa Claus in Miracle on 34th Street (1947).Get other Entertainment Biography AudioBooks hereĪfter twenty years, the story of Natalie Wood's extraordinary life and mysterious death is revealed in a riveting new biography We watched her mature on the movie screen before our eyes in Miracle on 34th Street, Rebel Without a Cause, West Side Story, Splendor in the Grass, and on and on. Lambert reminds us that Natalie began acting at the age of 4 with a less-than bit part in a parade scene in The Happy Land, filmed in the spring of 1943 in Healdsburg, Calif., not far from where Natalie was living with her Russian immigrant family. All the while, Lambert explains, Natalie was walking a tightrope between vulnerability and self-control. The book is intelligently written as it paints a candid but depressing portrait of a woman who was first manipulated by her backstage mother and would subsequently look for approval from many of those around her, sometimes in the wrong places. Lambert’s Natalie Wood: A Life was written with the approval of the family and consequently has a more delicate and complimentary touch. Similar observations can be found in the tabloid- like Natalie: A Memoir by disgruntled sister Lana Wood and the semimainstream biography Natasha by Suzanne Finstad. So writes biographer, screenwriter and novelist Gavin Lambert, whose 25-year friendship with the actress began when she wanted to star in the film adaptation of his novel Inside Daisy Clover. Natalie Wood was a beautiful, talented yet vulnerable actress who struggled with the demons that haunted her throughout her adult life.