Natalie Wood In West Side Story (dir. Robert Wise/Jerome Robbins, 1961)

Rebel Without a Cause (1955) Screen Test

Natalie Wood photographed in her Laurel Canyon home, circa 1956.

“The next day, she ... went to see Dean in “East of Eden,” which had opened at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. “She walked out and said, ‘I’m gonna marry him.’ Natalie later admitted she had ‘a big crush’ on Dean. “I remember going with my school girlfriends to see East of Eden like fifteen times, sitting there sobbing when he tried to give the money to his father. We knew every word by heart.”

When I saw The Umbrellas of Cherbourg again a few years ago, it struck me: it’s exactly the same ending as in Splendor in the Grass. I adore that film. It’s one of the most beautiful love stories I’ve ever seen in the cinema. And the end scene is exactly the same as in Umbrellas. He is on the farm, with his dungarees, his wife, the child and she comes back…it was so moving to see that resemblance. I think it is one of the maddest, most audacious films on the subject of love. Particularly for a man to bring a young woman to life in such a way! Splendor in the Grass is so much about unbridled love. The idea that loving can make you insane. That is what happens: you become insane! Going as far as to see her leave for the hospital, because she is dying of love, she wants to die! That film knocked me over. - Catherine Deneuve

Natalie Wood photographed by Bill Ray for a 1963 issue of Life Magazine, “It was a dream come true assignment,” said Ray. “Wood was every inch a Movie Goddess.”

- Why do you do that? why are you so fanciful? why do you make everything special? -Because it is.

— Natalie Wood in This Property Is Condemned (1966).

Natalie Wood eating Chinese food, Ralph Crane, 1957.

Sex and the Single Girl (1964) dir. Richard Quine