In real life, she was Natasha Gurdin, the daughter of a prop maker. But to millions, she is remembered as the young star of the classic "Miracle on 34th Street" and Maria in "West Side Story." Her name was Sisters.

She was taken and molded into an enigmatic screen Goddess, and began as just a child. Four-year-old Natalie was watching a movie being filmed one day when director Irving Pichel plucked her from the crowd and asked her to drop an ice cream cone and cry. Her bit part led her to the classic "Miracle on 34th Street" four years later.

Wood, one of her generation's most talented actresses, was a paragon of sultry glamour and sensuous innocence. Her rise from obscurity to stardom was propelled by an enormous talent and insecurity. Nominated for three Academy Awards, Natalie starred with such handsome and sexy Hollywood actors as Warren Beatty in "Splendor in the Grass," Robert Redford in "Inside Daisy Clover," James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause," and Frank Sinatra in "Kings Go Forth."

Wood's personal life was as rich and as textured as her remarkable screen career. Her real-life mother, Russian-born Maria Gurdin, was much like her screen mother in the classic 1961 film "Gypsy." A stern, shrewd woman, she scrutinized scripts, argued over fees and dressed Natalie in prim and proper outfits while her daughter's young competitors wore sexy clothes. She was no different [with few exceptions] from any of her classmates at Van Nuyes High School; even once falling victim to the comedy of a young Robert Redford.

Her first marriage was a glamourous one, everything one would hope it to be, she was in her prime and now uninhibited by her mothers protective outter shell. However, what had made Natalie's adolescence a pain was now hovering in over her younger sister Lana who spent many nights w/Natalie who understood her pain. The bad times, the good times, it was Natalie who always seemed to find a way out.

The rich, glamorous and talented Sisters died tragically in 1981 at 42 in a drowning accident. Robert Wagner, to whom she was married twice in what was a passionate, undying love. She was survived by her husband [most currently acting as "Number 2" in Austin Powers: the Spy Who Shagged Me], her daughters Natasha [starring in Rushmore] and Courtney, her step-daughter Katie Wagner, and her sisters Lana and Olga.