Maria (West Side Story) after he meets and kisses Maria for the first time. Her name is sung 29 times in total. Natalie Wood was not the first choice to play Maria in the 1961 film version. Audrey Hepburn was considered, but she did not take it due to her pregnancy. Like Wood, Hepburn was not Puerto Rican; she was British, Dutch, and Austrian. Oh Maria, Maria / She remind me of a West Side story. Maria (West Side Story) Maria is the leading female character in the film "West Side Story". Maria is in her late teens when she arrives on the US
West Side Story West Side Story West Side Story is a musical with book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. It was inspired by William Shakespeare's play "Romeo and Juliet". The story is set in the Upper West Side neighborhood in New York City in the mid 1950s, an ethnic, blue-collar neighborhood (in the early 1960s, much of the neighborhood was cleared in an urban renewal project for Lincoln Center, which changed the neighborhood's character). The musical explores the rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks, two teenage street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds. The members of