page_title: Natalie Wood
section_title: Death
hierarchical_section_title: Natalie Wood / Death
caption_attribution_description: English: Natalie Wood's Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
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: Wood died  in mysterious  circumstances at age 43 during the making of Brainstorm while on a weekend boat trip to Catalina Island on board Wagner's yacht Splendour. Outside of drowning, many of the circumstances are unknown; it was never determined how she entered the water. 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. 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, but no indication as to how or when the injuries occurred.
   
  Davern had previously stated that Wood and Wagner argued that evening, which Wagner denied at the time. In his memoir Pieces of My Heart, Wagner admitted that he had an argument with Wood before she disappeared. The autopsy found that Wood's blood alcohol content was 0.14% 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 the cause of 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 who were on a nearby boat stated that they had heard a woman scream for help during the night.
  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.
  The case was reopened in November 2011 after Davern publicly stated that he had lied to police during the initial investigation and that Wood and Wagner had an argument that evening. He alleged that Wood had been flirting with Walken, that Wagner was jealous and enraged, and that Wagner had prevented Davern from turning on the search lights and notifying authorities after Wood's disappearance. Davern alleged that Wagner was responsible for her death. Walken hired a lawyer, co-operated with the investigation, and was not considered a suspect by authorities.
  In 2012, Los Angeles County Chief Coroner Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran amended Wood's death certificate and changed the cause of death from accidental drowning to "drowning and other undetermined factors". The amended document included a statement that it is "not clearly established" how Wood ended up in the water. Detectives instructed the coroner's office not to discuss or comment on the case. On January 14, 2013, the Los Angeles County coroner's office offered a 10-page addendum to Wood's autopsy report. The addendum stated that Wood might have sustained some of the bruises on her body before she went into the water, but that this could not be definitively determined.  Forensic pathologist Michael Hunter speculated that Wood was particularly susceptible to bruising because she had taken the drug Synthroid.
  In February 2018, Wagner was named a person of interest in the investigation; he has denied any involvement. In a 2018 report, the Los Angeles Times cited the coroner's report from 2013 saying that Wood had unexplained fresh bruising on her right forearm, left wrist, and right knee, a scratch on her neck and a superficial scrape on her forehead. Officials said that it is possible that she was assaulted before she drowned.
  For its last 20 years, Splendour, the 55-foot yacht on which Wood had been aboard on the
caption: Natalie Wood's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
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