Editing Natalie Wood (section)

===''West Side Story''===
[[File:West Side Story (1961) still 4.jpg|thumb|Wood as Maria in ''[[West Side Story (1961 film)|West Side Story]]'']]
Wood played Maria, a restless Puerto Rican girl on the West Side of Manhattan, in ''[[West Side Story (1961 film)|West Side Story]]'', [[Jerome Robbins]] and [[Robert Wise]]'s 1961 film of the stage musical, which was a critical and box-office success. Tibbetts wrote of similarities in her role in this film and the earlier ''Rebel.'' She was to represent the "restlessness of American youth in the 1950s", expressed by youth gangs and juvenile delinquency, along with early [[rock and roll]]. Both films, he observes, were "modern allegories based on the '[[Romeo and Juliet]]' theme, including private restlessness and public alienation. Where in ''Rebel'' she falls in love with the character played by James Dean, whose gang-like peers and violent temper alienated him from his family, in ''West Side Story'' she enters into a romance with a white former gang member whose threatening world of outcasts also alienated him from lawful behavior."<ref name=Tibbetts />

Although Wood's singing in the film was voiced by [[Marni Nixon]],{{sfn|Lambert|2004|p=171}} ''West Side Story'' is still regarded as one of Wood's best films.