Child Actress
As an infant, Wood appeared in Driftwood (1947), but her scene was deleted from the final version of the film. Lana's first credited film role was in director John Ford's western classic The Searchers (1956), which stars John Wayne and also features Wood's sister Natalie; Lana and Natalie play the same character at different ages, with similar amounts of screen time. Natalie's stage name was Wood, given to her by the producer of her first film. Maria was asked under what last name Lana should be credited, and Maria agreed it would be best if she could be credited as "Wood," like her sister. As a child, she also made guest appearances in Playhouse 90 (1957), The Real McCoys (1958), and appeared in the films Marjorie Morningstar (1958) and Five Finger Exercise (1962).
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Famous quotes containing the words child and/or actress:
“The shift from the perception of the child as innocent to the perception of the child as competent has greatly increased the demands on contemporary children for maturity, for participating in competitive sports, for early academic achievement, and for protecting themselves against adults who might do them harm. While children might be able to cope with any one of those demands taken singly, taken together they often exceed children’s adaptive capacity.”
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