According to The Hollywood Reporter, scoring the role of Judy in 1955’s Rebel Without A Cause would prove to be game-changing for Natalie Wood. Filming alongside James Dean for the landmark picture, her performance would earn Wood her first Oscar nomination and mark a successful shift in her career from child actress to teen star. How she landed that role, though, was sadly marked by the exploitative processes that Hollywood has been notorious for.

Wood was 16 when she auditioned for the 42-year-old director of the film, Nicholas Ray. Ray and the underage Wood then became involved in a “sexual liaison,” as described by biographer Suzanne Finstad, writing for Vanity Fair. But even with that illegal affair (California’s age of consent has been 18 since at least 1920, according to YR Media), it seemed that Wood was still not promised the part of Judy. In a later interview, Wood described how she tried to convince Ray to give her the role after she got involved in a car crash. When Ray came to see Wood at the hospital, “the doctor called Wood a ‘goddamn juvenile delinquent.’ She yelled: ‘Did you hear what he called me, Nick? He called me a goddamn juvenile delinquent! Now do I get the part?'”

After years of research on Natalie Wood, biographer Suzanne Finstand released her findings in Natasha: The Biography of Natalie Wood, revealing a tragic episode that occurred when Wood was only 16. Called up to a hotel suite to read for a part for her childhood idol, Wood was then brutally assaulted by “a powerful, married movie star more than twenty years older than she.” Threatened and traumatized, Wood never reported it, telling only a handful of friends. The details of the event differed depending on who Finstand interviewed, but “the essence of what each recalls Natalie confiding to them is the same: that the same married film star lured or tricked Natalie, raped her so brutally she was physically injured, and she was too frightened or intimidated to report it to the police.” While Wood would forever despise her rapist, the attack remained a secret.

In 2018, on the podcast Fatal Voyage: The Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood, Wood’s sister Lana confirmed the attack, adding in the details that it occurred at the Chateau Marmont Hotel and that, “Many, many years later […] Natalie only alluded to the fact that something bad had happened and in a way blamed my mom for being too eager for Natalie to get roles” (via US Weekly). While the perpetrator was never named, rumors heavily implicate Kirk Douglas, to the point that Natalie Wood trended when the actor passed away in 2020, according to The Guardian and Indy100.

According to Biography, when teen star Natalie Wood and up-and-coming heartthrob Robert Wagner first got together, they were Hollywood’s fairytale couple and a hot topic for teen gossip. Their relationship was actually set up by the studios in 1956 as a way to promote both the 18-year-old actress and 26-year-old actor, but the feelings became real and the two married a year later. Unfortunately, the so-called perfect couple suddenly called it quits in 1961, stirring up rumors that the marriage failed due to Wood’s infidelity, according to Suzanne Finstad via Los Angeles Magazine. For decades, an affair with her costar Warren Beatty was the accepted killer of the Wood-Wagner union, but recent digging by Finstand unveiled that this was untrue.

In talking with a few of Wood’s close friends, her mother’s best friend, and Wood’s sister, Finstand found that it was actually Wood who was cheated on: She caught her husband having sex with his longtime butler. In an unreleased memoir, Wood wrote, “It is too painful for me to recall in print the incident that led to the final break-up. It was more than a final straw, it was reality crushing the fragile web of romantic fantasies with sledgehammer force.” Still, while the incident was serious enough to lead to the dissolution of their first marriage, the two were able to reconcile, remarrying a decade later. To this day, Wagner denies the affair.

By 1966, the failures of her recent films and relationships had taken a serious toll on Natalie Wood. According to Warren Harris, author of Natalie and R.J.: The Star-Crossed Love Affair of Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner, Wood was already in a bad psychological state when ex-boyfriend Warren Beatty showed up without any warning in order to convince her to join his next movie. She had already refused once, adamantly against the idea of not having access to her therapist for those months of filming in Texas. While no one knows how the exchange between the two went, what is known is that right after Beatty left, Wood “attempted suicide by swallowing a handful of barbiturates.”

Somewhere between taking the pills and falling unconscious, Wood must have changed her mind because her housemate, former secretary Mart Crowley, heard her call for him. He found her unconscious on the stairs and immediately took her to the hospital, where they pumped her stomach. When her sister visited her at the hospital, Wood confessed, “I didn’t want to live anymore. […] Now I do.” According to MSN, after the incident, the actress took a break from working for three years in order to “focus on her mental health.”

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

The suspicious aspects of Natalie Wood’s death would keep the public from accepting it was an accident for four decades. In 2011, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department reopened her case “after receiving ‘additional information’ from unidentified sources who contacted the authorities,” according to Harper’s Bazaar. That same year, Dennis Davern explicitly stated that he had lied to the police during the first investigation, claiming that Robert Wagner, who he heard get into a heated argument with Wood, was responsible for the actress’ death. By 2013, Wood’s cause of death was changed to “drowning and other undetermined factors,” and five years later, Wagner was declared a person of interest in the case, although he continues to deny any involvement. 

In 2020, Suzanne Finstad revealed that she had found additional information which suggests that Wood’s death wasn’t an accident (via Vanity Fair). Most enlightening was Dr. Michael Franco’s observations from when he was an intern at the LA Coroner’s Office. He had noticed that the abrasions on Wood’s legs were in a direction that suggested she was getting pushed off a boat, not trying to get on, but his concerns fell on deaf ears, with the coroner telling him, “Some things are best left unsaid.” It would take nearly 40 years for Dr. Franco to come forward, sharing his suspicions of a cover-up with the investigators in charge of the reopened case.