Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/231210
UNITED ARTISTS West Side Story PBS Electric Company MARK HILL HBO Oz young age, and making her Broadway debut at age 13 in Skydrift, starring Eli Wallach. From there, her natural talent and charisma — with the help of a 1954 LIFE magazine cover — helped her land a variety of roles, including Tuptim in The King and I. In 1961, she was cast as Anita in West Side Story, one of her most memorable roles, and one that would prove to be challenging to the young actor in an unexpected way. She had a particularly difficult time with the scene in which Anita is attacked in the candy store, which brought back memories of a dark chapter from her past — when as a teenager she was assaulted by an unscrupulous casting agent. "That's the scene where I broke down and we had to stop shooting for a while. We called an early lunch because I just went to pieces. We had done it over and over and I just could not stop crying. Old wounds sometimes never really heal. It's a thin kind of scab that sits on these kind of psychic and emotional wounds, and obviously that was one of them," she said. SAGAFTRA.org | Special Issue 2014 | SAG-AFTRA 86