That led to Tomorrow is Forever and then Miracle on 34th Street where i was asked to cry in a scene and for authenticity, my mother helped me out by ripping up a live butterfly right in front of me.
Hollywood makes you grow up fast and while idling around sets i picked up some very adult habits, such as smoking like a train.
I made the leap from child star to teen idol when at 16 i appeared in the James Dean classic Rebel Without a Cause as the surly teenager Judy, i was then dating a wannabe singer called Elvis Presley.
I always had an intense fear of water after almost drowning in a river as a child and wore a large bracelet on my left wrist to hide an ugly bone protrusion.
For my 18th birthday, my studio arranged a present which would affect the rest of my life, they arranged date with Robert Wagner, the man who i would marry twice and played a big part at the end of my life.
Hollywood decided i was washed up at 25 years old as i wouldn't make the transformation from child star to fully fledged actress and I also had a few 'personal problems' which included getting my stomach pumped three times after sleeping pill overdoses.
Despite that i got the the role of Maria in the film version of West Side Story, beating out Hollywood heavy hitters like Audrey Hepburn and Jane Fonda for the part.
On November 29, 1981, fate came for me when in the middle of filming Brainstorm, my husband, my co-star Christopher Walken and i decided to take a weekend boat trip on Wagner’s yacht Splendour.
A few drinks, some painkillers, an argument with my husband, a big scream for help and one big splash later and what the poilce officially called 'drowning and other undetermined factors'.
The last i heard the police had listed my husband as a person of interest in the case, maybe just a wild grab in the dark which, incidentally, is exactly the last thing he ever gave me.
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