Christopher Walken Offered Natalie Wood Death Theory in Past Interview

Christopher Walken remained silent on the 1981 death of Natalie Wood for many years, until one 1997 interview in which he recounted the night’s events and offered up a theory on what may have happened to the actress.

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“Anybody there saw the logistics -- of the boat, the night, where we were, that it was raining -- and would know exactly what happened,” Walken told Playboy Magazine. “You hear about things happening to people – they slip in the bathtub, fall down the stairs, step off the curb in London because they think that the cars come the other way – and they die. You feel you want to die making an effort at something; you don’t want to die in some unnecessary way.”

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“What happened that night only she knows, because she was alone,” he said. “She had gone to bed before us, and her room was at the back. A dinghy was bouncing against the side of the boat, and I think she went out to move it. There was a ski ramp that was partially in the water. It was slippery – I had walked on it myself. She had told me she couldn’t swim; in fact, they had to cut a swimming scene from [Brainstorm]. She was probably half asleep, and she was wearing a coat.”

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Walken suggested Wood hit her head before falling into the water and floating away. Initially, he and Wood’s then-husband Robert Wagner assumed that the actress had left the boat to call her children, as she had the night before. The boat was just 50 feet away from shore off the coast of Catalina Island.

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The investigation was officially re-opened on Friday, Nov. 18, nearly 30 years after her death, by the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.

As The Hollywood Reporter first reported, Walken has hired litigation specialist Mathew Rosengart to represent him in the re-opened case. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department does not consider Walken or Wagner to be suspects in the inquiry.