Nicholas was born in Ussuriysk (then referred to as Nikolskoye). He was born in 1912 and later passed on November 18, 1980. He is famously known for being Natalie Wood’s father
a famous actress who before changing name was formerly known as Natalie Zakharenko
Career, Personal Life, and Relationship
Nicholas was the son of a chocolate factory worker who would later enter the Bolshevik civilian forces at that time of war. His father died in Vladivostok during a street fight between the white and red Russian soldiers. This is when Nicholas’s mother, Stephan Zakharenko became a widow and fled with Nicholas and his brothers Dmitri and Vladamir to Shanghai and resultantly relocated to Vancouver.
It is during this period in 1927 that Nicholas would meet his wife Maria (also known as Mary, Marie, and Musia) while she was still with her first husband. Nicholas’s wife (1908–1998) was four times his senior. Nicholas’s wife was originally born in Barnaul, southern Siberia. When the Russian Civil War began, Maria’s family left Russia to resettle as refugees in Harbin, China. His wife was first married to Alexander Tatuloff with whom they had a daughter named Olga (1928-2015). They would later move to America before divorcing in 1936.
Family
They would later move to the US. In February 1938, five months before the birth of Natalie, Nicholas and his wife got married. They then bought a house in Santa Rosa where Natalie would be spotted by some crew members shooting a film downtown. This is where their daughter Natalie Wood’s acting career story began and from here, she successfully transitioned to various young adult roles.
She began appearing in movies at age five. She married actor Robert Wagner in 1957 (divorced 1962; remarried 1972). In 1981, while vacationing with Wagner and actor Christopher Walken on a yacht off the coast of Santa Catalina Island, California, Wood drowned under mysterious circumstances.
Nicholas also had a second daughter with his wife by the name of Svetlana Gurdin born in 1946 in Santa Monica. The parents would also later change her name to Lana Wood. Similar to her sister, Lana Wood also followed the acting career path.
