Natalie Wood was sexually assaulted by Kirk Douglas as a teenager, new book claims

Lana Wood, Natalie Wood’s younger sister, is the author of a new memoir

Natalie Wood circa 1960 (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Natalie Wood was sexually assaulted by Kirk Douglas when she was a teenager, a new book has claimed.

Wood’s younger sister, Lana Wood, is the author of the memoir Little Sister, which will be released on 9 November.

According to The Associated Press, which published excerpts of the book on Thursday (4 November), the book identifies the perpetrator of the sexual assault, which allegedly occurred in the summer of 1955, as Kirk Douglas.

“I remember that Natalie looked especially beautiful when Mom and I dropped her off that night at the Chateau Marmont entrance,” she writes, adding: “It seemed like a long time passed before Natalie got back into the car and woke me up when she slammed the door shut.

“She looked awful. She was very disheveled and very upset, and she and Mom started urgently whispering to each other. I couldn’t really hear them or make out what they were saying. Something bad had apparently happened to my sister, but whatever it was, I was apparently too young to be told about it.”

Lana Wood alleges that her sister didn’t discuss the incident with her until they were both adults, when she described being brought into Douglas’s suite and told her sister: “And, uh ... he hurt me Lana.”

Kirk Douglas died in February 2020 at the age of 103. His son Michael Douglas told The Associated Press in a statement: “May they both rest in peace.”

Natalie Wood died on 29 November 1981 aged 43. Her cause of death was changed in 2012 to “drowning and other undetermined factors”. Prior to that, her death had been deemed an accident.

The Associated Press contributed to this story