Bond Girl’s plight: Lana Wood, 71, living in motel room with five relations
IN THE Sixties and Seventies, Lana Wood was a star, appearing in the television soap Peyton Place before becoming Bond Girl Plenty O’Toole opposite Sean Connery in Diamonds Are Forever. Her big sister Natalie was Hollywood royalty.
But today Lana Wood is penniless living in a single motel room with five other members of her family.
Inside Edition, the American news programme, found the 71-year-old liv- ing with her daughter, son-in-law and their three children.
All six had been sharing the same house in Los Angeles but could no longer pay the rent and were forced to move out.
Wood’s daughter Evan has been suffering from Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, a form of cancer, and lung disease, which has left the family with mounting medical bills.
Wood, too, needs to have two knee replacement surgeries. The family sleep across two double beds and a camp bed in a room where the only other furnishings are a fridge and a microwave. “You live in a snow globe and the world is upside down, emotional,” Wood said. “It’s like the rugs have been pulled out from under you. And it’s just difficult to cope with.” Her sister Natalie, star of Rebel With
out a Cause and West Side Story, drowned in 1981, aged 43, after an evening of drinking aboard her husband Robert Wagner’s yacht.
The exact circumstances surround- ing her death remainn mysterious and Wood has demanded that Wagner speak again with police about what happened that night.
Wagner has always denied any involvement in Natalie’s death and the police do not consider him a suspect. Wood’s conflict with him has led to an estrangement from Natalie’s two children, but she says that if her sister were alive she would be “devastated” and would “fix” her problems. However, hope has emerged as a friend has set up a Gofundme page on behalf of the Wood family, which has received more than $23,000 (£17,800) in donations so far.