page_title: Natalie Wood
section_title: Child actress
hierarchical_section_title: Natalie Wood / Career / Child actress
caption_attribution_description: English: Press photo of Natalie Wood from 1947.
context_page_description: Natalie Wood was an American actress who began her career in film as a child actor and successfully transitioned to young adult roles. She was the recipient of four Golden Globes, and received three Academy Award nominations.
  Wood began her acting career at age 4 and was given a co-starring role at age 8 in Miracle on 34th Street. As a teenager, she earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Rebel Without a Cause, followed by a role in John Ford's The Searchers. Wood starred in the musical films West Side Story and Gypsy, and she received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in Splendor in the Grass and Love with the Proper Stranger. Her career continued with films such as Sex and the Single Girl, Inside Daisy Clover, and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.
  During the 1970s, Wood began a hiatus from film and had a child with husband Robert Wagner, whom she had previously married and divorced. Wagner and Wood remarried after she divorced her second husband.
context_section_description: A few weeks before her fifth birthday, Wood made her film debut as a character actress in a fifteen-second scene in the film Happy Land (1943). Despite the brief part, she attracted the notice of the director, Irving Pichel. He remained in contact with Wood's family for two years, advising them when another role came up. The director telephoned Wood's mother and asked her to bring her daughter to Los Angeles for a screen test. Wood's mother became so excited that she "packed the whole family off to Los Angeles to live," writes Harris. Wood's father opposed the idea, but his wife's "overpowering ambition to make Natalie a star" took priority. According to Wood's younger sister Lana, Pichel "discovered her and wanted to adopt her."
  Wood, then seven years old, got the part. She played a post-World War II German orphan, opposite Orson Welles as Wood's guardian and Claudette Colbert, in Tomorrow Is Forever (1946). When Wood was unable to cry on cue, her mother tore a butterfly to pieces in front of her to ensure she would sob for a scene. Welles later said that Wood was a born professional, "so good, she was terrifying." After Wood acted in another film directed by Pichel, her mother signed her with 20th Century Fox for her first major role in Miracle on 34th Street (1947), starring Maureen O'Hara, which has become a Christmas classic. Wood was counted among the top child stars in Hollywood after the film and was so popular that Macy's invited her to appear in the store's annual Thanksgiving Day parade.
  Film historian John C. Tibbetts wrote that for the next few years following her success in Miracle, Wood played roles as a daughter in a series of family films: Fred MacMurray's daughter in Father Was a Fullback (1949) and Dear Brat (1951); Margaret Sullavan's daughter in No Sad Songs for Me (1950); the youngest sister in Our Very Own (1950 film); James Stewart's daughter in The Jackpot (1950); Joan Blondell's neglected daughter in The Blue Veil (1951); and the daughter of Bette Davis' character in The Star (1952). In all, Wood appeared in over twenty films as a child.
  Because Wood was a minor during her early years as an actress, she received her primary education on the studio lots wherever she was contracted. California law required that until age 18, child actors had to spend at least three hours per day in the classroom, notes Harris. "She was a straight A student", and one of the few child actors to excel at arithmetic. Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who directed her in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), said that, "In all my years in the business, I never met a smarter moppet." Wood remembered that period in her life, saying, "I always felt guilty when I knew the crew was sitting around waiting for me to finish my three hours. As soon as the teacher let us go, I ran to the set as fast as I could."
  Wood's mother continued to play a significant role in her daughter's early career, coaching her and micromanaging aspects of her career even after Wood acquired agents. As a child actress, Wood received significant media attention. By age nine, she had been named the "most exciting juvenile motion picture star of the year" by Parents magazine.
caption: Wood as Susan Walker in Miracle on 34th Street, 1947
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