Amazing... and beautiful, Natalie Wood was born Natasha Gurdin on this day in 1938 in San Francisco, California. She was a ballerina before she was a kindergartener—and an actress before most kids could ride a bike. By age nine, she tugged at the world’s heartstrings in *Miracle on 34th Street* (1947).

With enormous brown eyes and a rare combination of spirit and innocence, Natalie was a natural in front of the camera. “She was so good—she was terrifying,” said Orson Welles.

At 17, she starred opposite James Dean in *Rebel Without a Cause* (1955), earning her first Oscar nomination. The world saw her soul in that role: raw, tender, real.

In *Splendor in the Grass* (1961), critic Bosley Crowther wrote, “Miss Wood has a beauty and radiance that carry her through a role of violent passions and depressions with unsullied purity and strength. There is poetry in her performance.”

As Maria in *West Side Story* (1961), Natalie lit up the screen in a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet, dancing and dreaming with a voice dubbed by Marni Nixon, but with emotions all her own.

“Anyone who says it doesn't hurt when critics zap you is not to be believed,” she once admitted, revealing the sensitivity behind the strength.

She married actor Robert Wagner—twice. After their first divorce, she called their time apart *Seitensprung*, a German word for when two dancers switch partners, only to reunite before the waltz ends. “We'll probably go on fighting—and making up—until we're 90,” she laughed.

But fate had other plans. In 1981, at just 43, her life ended tragically during a boating accident near Catalina Island. Still, her radiance lives on—in film, in memory, and in the legacy of every woman who dares to be amazing. Because she's a woman. She lived like a poem: brief, luminous, unforgettable.