Full Name Svetlana Gurdin Name Lana Wood Role Actress | Years active 1956–present Height 1.60 m Children Evan Smedley (b. 1974) | |
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Nieces Natasha Gregson Wagner, Courtney Brooke Wagner Spouse Allan Balter (m. 1978–1981) Movies Similar People Natalie Wood, Jill St John, Sally Todd, Claudine Auger, Robert Wagner Nationality American Zodiac Sign Pisces | ||
Lana wood
Lana Wood (born Svetlana Gurdin; March 1, 1946) is an American actress and producer. She is best known for her role as Plenty O'Toole in the James Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever (1971). Her elder sister was film star Natalie Wood.
Contents
Dedicated to Lana Wood - Diamonds are forever
Early life
Wood was born Svetlana Gurdin to Russian immigrant parents, Nikolai and Maria Zakharenko. They had each left Russia as child refugees with their parents after the Russian Revolution, and grew up far from their homeland. Her father's family settled in Vancouver, British Columbia. After her maternal grandfather died in street fighting in 1918, Lana's grandmother took Maria and her siblings as refugees out of the country, settling in a Russian community in Harbin, China.
Maria married there and had a daughter Olga Viripaeff with her first husband. Maria immigrated to Vancouver with her child. who died in May 2015.
When Nikolai and Maria married, she brought her daughter Olga to the household. The couple also had two daughters together: the first was named Natalia, known as "Natasha", the Russian diminutive. The family settled in Santa Monica, California, near Hollywood and changed their surname to Gurdin. Svetlana, known as "Lana", was born there.
Her parents changed the surname of her elder sister, Natalie to "Wood", after she started her acting career as a child. She was named after Wood's director Irving Pichel's friend Sam Wood.
When Lana made her film debut in The Searchers (1956), her mother was asked under what last name Lana should be credited. Maria agreed to use "Wood" for Lana, building on Natalie's recognized work.
Career
In her early career, Wood usually played bit parts in films in which Natalie appeared. Starting in the 1960s, her own career took off. After appearing on the short-lived drama series The Long, Hot Summer, she landed the role of Sandy Webber on the soap series Peyton Place. She played the role from 1966–67. In 1970, Wood was approached to pose for Playboy by Hugh Hefner and agreed. The Playboy pictures appeared in the April 1971 issue, along with Wood's poetry. She was cast as a Bond girl, Plenty O'Toole, in the James Bond film, Diamonds Are Forever (1971).
Wood has more than 20 other films and over 300 television series to her credit, including The Fugitive, Bonanza, Mission: Impossible, Police Story, Starsky & Hutch, Nero Wolfe, Fantasy Island and Capitol. After appearing in the horror film Satan's Mistress (1982), she retired from acting, concentrating on her career as a producer, but has since returned to acting in a number of low-budget films since 2008. Lana is a character in the Steve Alten book Meg: Hell's Aquarium (2009). Wood wrote a memoir, Natalie, A Memoir by Her Sister (1984).
Personal life
Wood has been married five times:
- Jack Wrather Jr. – (m. 1962; annulled when she was 16 years old)
- Karl Brent – (m. 1965–1966; divorced)
- Stephen Oliver – (m. 1967; divorced)
- Richard Smedley – (m. 1973–1975; divorced); 1 child, Evan (August 11, 1974 - July 18, 2017), by whom she has three grandchildren.
- Allan Balter (m. 1978-81)